Answer:
How and why does the surface of the earth change
of the earth has changed?
It can be hard to describe change on the surface without bringing up the interior. Earth is a system of constantly changing interactions between interior, surface conditions, and external events.
Volcanoes bring up new material and even create land. The Hawaiian islands, for instance are a chain of volcanoes on the surface, but the underlying structure is a single magma plume. In a way, the entire chain of islands is a single volcano that breaks through different places as the crust moves over it.
On that note: plates. Earth is made of tectonic plates that constantly move. Some grind against one another, others collide, and some pull apart. Depending on direction and interaction, you get anything from mountains, to spreading valleys, oceans, and anything else you care to name. Mountains can almost be viewed as something akin to the ridges of build up ice on a window scraper.
Erosion by water, wind, sand, chemicals, and living things changes the surface too. Materials on the surface face an incredible number of forces breaking them down and dragging them away, even as those same forces in different places and situations deposit those materials in other places, building things back up.
“Stardust” is also a thing. Rocks, dust, debris, and all sorts of random, natural cra.,p is constantly hitting our atmosphere. Regardless of whether or not it stays mostly intact, some material breaks off, and most of it does tend to make it to the surface, adding tiny amounts of matter all the time. …of course something BIG enough hitting the surface can throw rocks and chunks of surface clear into space, so that’s a thing too.
Remember when I mentioned living things? Living things D.,IE! Gac.k! And when they do, they break down into organic gunk. Soil - the stuff we grow crops in - is basically minerals and dead things that are decaying into nutritious, yummy, dir.,t.
Weather changes things too. Rain erodes, but rain that soaks a rock, and then is frozen by low temperatures, breaks the rock. Too much rain can create flooding, which results in a lot of sediment moving downstream. Heat can dry things out, crack the ground, and even slowly cook one kind of soil into another. Lightning can make glass out of sand, snow can collapse weak ground, not enough rain can dry out ground that could si.nk down without the extra pressure, and too much rain can literally move mountainsides if enough water adds its weight to the rocks and dir.t.
It’s always changing, and there is always more complexity to go into when studying it. There’s seldom a single cause, or reason, or effect for anything.
Explanation:
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