1.
Western Ghats
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Western Ghats மேற்கு தொடர்ச்சி மலை is a mountain range that runs parallel to the western coast of the Indian peninsula, located entirely in India. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is one of the eight hottest hot-spots of biological diversity in the world and it is sometimes called the Great Escarpment of India. The range runs north to south along the edge of the Deccan Plateau. These hills cover 160,000 km2 and form the catchment area for complex riverine drainage systems that drain almost 40% of India, the Western Ghats block southwest monsoon winds from reaching the Deccan Plateau. The average elevation is around 1,200 m, at least 325 globally threatened species occur in the Western Ghats. The Western Ghats are the mountainous faulted and eroded edge of the Deccan Plateau, geologic evidence indicates that they were formed during the break-up of the supercontinent of Gondwana some 150 million years ago. Geophysical evidence indicates that the west coast of India came into being somewhere around 100 to 80 mya after it broke away from Madagascar, after the break-up, the western coast of India would have appeared as an abrupt cliff some 1,000 m in elevation. Basalt is the predominant rock found in the reaching a thickness of 3 km. Other rock types found are charnockites, granite gneiss, khondalites, leptynites, metamorphic gneisses with detached occurrences of limestone, iron ore. Residual laterite and bauxite ores are found in the southern hills. The Western Ghats extend from the Satpura Range in the north and it traverses south past the states of Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka and Kerala. Major gaps in the range are the Goa Gap, between the Maharashtra and Karnataka sections, and the Palghat Gap on the Tamil Nadu and Kerala border between the Nilgiri Hills and the Anaimalai Hills. The mountains intercept the rain-bearing westerly monsoon winds, and are consequently an area of high rainfall, particularly on their western side. The northern portion of the coastal plain between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea is known as the Konkan, the central portion is called Kanara. The foothill region east of the Ghats in Maharashtra is known as Desh, the range is known as Sahyadri in Maharashtra and Karnataka. The Western Ghats meets the Eastern Ghats at Nilgiris in northwestern Tamil Nadu, Nilgiris connects Biligiriranga Hills in southeastern Karnataka with the Shevaroys and Tirumala hills. In the southern part of the range is Anamudi, the highest peak in Western Ghats, following is a list of some of the highest peaks of the Western Ghats, The Western Ghats form one of the four watersheds of India, feeding the perennial rivers of India. The major river systems originating in the Western Ghats include Godavari, Kaveri, Krishna, Thamiraparani, majority of streams draining the Western Ghats join these rivers and carry large volume of water during the monsoon months
2.
Matheran
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Matheran is a hill station and a municipal council in the Raigad district in the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is a station in Karjat Tahsil and is also the smallest hill station in India. It is located on the Western Ghats range at an elevation of around 800 m above sea level and it is located around 90 km from Mumbai, and 120 km from Pune. Matherans proximity to metropolitan cities makes it a popular weekend getaway for urban residents. Matheran, which means forest on the forehead is a region, declared by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. It is Asias only automobile-free hill station, There are around 38 designated look-out points in Matheran, including the Panorama Point that provides a 360 degree view of the surrounding area and also the Neral town. From this point, the view of sunset and sunrise is dramatic, the Louisa Point offers crystal clear view of the Prabal Fort. The other points are the One Tree Hill Point, Heart Point, Monkey Point, Porcupine Point, Rambagh Point, to stay there, there are plenty of hotels. There are a lot of Parsi bungalows. Beautiful old British-style architecture is preserved in Matheran, the roads are not metalled and are made of red laterite earth. There are many points in Matheran which give a view of the plains below. Matheran was identified by Hugh Poyntz Malet, the district collector of Thane district in May 1850. Lord Elphinstone, the then Governor of Bombay laid the foundations of the development as a hill station. The British developed Matheran as a resort to beat the summer heat in the region. Matheran is birthplace of freedom fighter Veer Bhai Kotwal. He was born on 1 December 1912 in a barber family, State Govt. has built a monument in his memory. The Matheran Hill Railway was built in 1907 by Sir Adamjee Peerbhoy and covers a distance of 20 km, over large swathes of forest territory. The Matheran hill railway, also known as Matheran Light Railway, was inspected by UNESCO world heritage site officials, indias other Hill Railways like the Darjeeling Railway, the Kangra Valley Railway, Nilgiri Mountain Railway are already on the list. Matheran has been declared an Eco-Sensitive zone by the Union Environment Ministry, a good collection of the dried plants is deposited in Blatter Herbarium, St. Xaviers College, Bombay, Mumbai
3.
Large igneous province
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The source of many or all LIPs is variously attributed to mantle plumes or to processes associated with plate tectonics. Types of LIPs can include large volcanic provinces, created through flood basalt, rampino and Stothers cite eleven distinct flood-basalt episodes - occurring in the past 250 million years - which created volcanic provinces and plateaus and coincided with mass extinctions. However, more flood basalts have been recognized, such as the large Ontong Java Plateau, mafic, basalt sea floors and other geological products of normal plate tectonics were not included in the definition. The definition of LIP has been expanded and refined, and is still a work in progress, LIP is now frequently also used to describe voluminous areas of, not just mafic, but all types of igneous rocks. Sub-categorization of LIPs into large volcanic provinces and large plutonic provinces, Large igneous provinces are created during short-lived igneous events resulting in relatively rapid and high-volume accumulations of volcanic and intrusive igneous rock. These events warrant study because, The study of LIPs has economic implications, some workers associate them with trapped hydrocarbons. They are associated with economic concentrations of copper–nickel and iron and they are also associated with formation of major mineral provinces including Platinum-Group Element Deposits, and in the Silicic LIPs, silver and gold deposits. Titanium and vanadium deposits are found in association with LIPs. Future LIP events may pose a hazard to human civilization, LIPs in the geological record have marked major changes in the hydrosphere and atmosphere, leading to major climate shifts and maybe mass extinctions of species. Plate tectonic theory explains topography using interactions between the plates, as influenced by viscous stresses created by flow within the underlying mantle. Since the mantle is extremely viscous, the flow rate varies in pulses which are reflected in the lithosphere by small amplitude. Understanding how the interaction between mantle flow and lithosphere elevation influences formation of LIPs is important to gaining insights into past mantle dynamics, LIPs have played a major role in continental breakup, continental formation, new crustal additions from the upper mantle, and supercontinent cycles. Earth has a shell made of a number of discrete. The mantles flow is driven by the descent of cold tectonic plates during subduction, the surface of the Earth reflects stretching, thickening and bending of the tectonic plates as they interact. In this model, tectonic plates diverge at mid-ocean ridges, where hot mantle rock flows upward to fill the space, plate-tectonic processes account for the vast majority of Earths volcanism. Beyond the effects of convectively driven motion, deep processes have other influences on the surface topography, the convective circulation drives up-wellings and down-wellings in Earths mantle that are reflected in local surface levels. Hot mantle materials rising up in a plume can spread out radially beneath the tectonic plate causing regions of uplift and these ascending plumes play an important role in LIP formation. When created, LIPs often have an extent of a few million km²
4.
Deccan Plateau
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The Deccan Plateau is a large plateau in southern India. It rises to 100 metres in the north, and to more than 1 kilometre in the south and it extends over eight Indian states and encompasses a wide range of habitats, covering most of central and southern India. It is separated from the Gangetic plain to the north by the Satpura and Vindhya Ranges, the name Deccan is an anglicised form of the Prakrit word dakkhin, itself derived from the Sanskrit word dákṣiṇa, as the Deccan Plateau is located in southern part of Indian subcontinent. The Deccan region has historically lacked an enduring geo-political centre, and has been defined in various ways, geographers have attempted to define it using indices such as rainfall, vegetation, soil type or physical features. When considering physical features, it is taken to be the bounded by the Narmada River, the Eastern Ghats. The 16th century historian Firishta defined Deccan as the inhabited by the native speakers of Kannada, Marathi. Richard M. Eaton also settled on this linguistic definition, the Western Ghats mountain range is very tall and blocks the moisture from the southwest monsoon from reaching the Deccan Plateau, so the region receives very little rainfall. The eastern Deccan Plateau is at an elevation spanning the southeastern coast of India. Its forests are relatively dry but serve to retain the rain to form streams that feed into rivers that flow into basins. Most Deccan plateau rivers flow south, most of the central plateau is drained by the Tungabhadra River, Krishna River and its tributaries, including the Bhima River, which also run east. The climate of the region varies from semi-arid in the north to tropical in most of the region with distinct wet, rain falls during the monsoon season from about June to October. March to June can be dry and hot, with temperatures regularly exceeding 40 °C. The name derives from the Sanskrit daksina, the plateau is bounded on the east and west by the Ghats, while its northern extremity is the Vindhya Range. The Deccans average elevation is about 2,000 feet, sloping generally eastward, its rivers, the Godavari, Krishna. The plateaus climate is drier than that on the coasts and is arid in places, having once constituted a segment of the ancient continent of Gondwanaland, this land is the oldest and most stable in India. The average height of the Western Ghats, which run along the Arabian Sea, anaimudi Peak in Kerala, with a height of 2,695 m above sea level, is the highest peak of peninsular India. In the Nilgiris lie Ootacamund, the hill station of southern India. The western coastal plain is uneven and swift rivers flow through it that forms beautiful lagoons and backwaters, the east coast is wide with deltas formed by the rivers Godavari, Mahanadi and Kaveri
5.
India
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India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and it is bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast. It shares land borders with Pakistan to the west, China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the northeast, in the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Indias Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a border with Thailand. The Indian subcontinent was home to the urban Indus Valley Civilisation of the 3rd millennium BCE, in the following millennium, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism began to be composed. Social stratification, based on caste, emerged in the first millennium BCE, early political consolidations took place under the Maurya and Gupta empires, the later peninsular Middle Kingdoms influenced cultures as far as southeast Asia. In the medieval era, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam arrived, much of the north fell to the Delhi sultanate, the south was united under the Vijayanagara Empire. The economy expanded in the 17th century in the Mughal empire, in the mid-18th century, the subcontinent came under British East India Company rule, and in the mid-19th under British crown rule. A nationalist movement emerged in the late 19th century, which later, under Mahatma Gandhi, was noted for nonviolent resistance, in 2015, the Indian economy was the worlds seventh largest by nominal GDP and third largest by purchasing power parity. Following market-based economic reforms in 1991, India became one of the major economies and is considered a newly industrialised country. However, it continues to face the challenges of poverty, corruption, malnutrition, a nuclear weapons state and regional power, it has the third largest standing army in the world and ranks sixth in military expenditure among nations. India is a constitutional republic governed under a parliamentary system. It is a pluralistic, multilingual and multi-ethnic society and is home to a diversity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats. The name India is derived from Indus, which originates from the Old Persian word Hindu, the latter term stems from the Sanskrit word Sindhu, which was the historical local appellation for the Indus River. The ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi, which translates as The people of the Indus, the geographical term Bharat, which is recognised by the Constitution of India as an official name for the country, is used by many Indian languages in its variations. Scholars believe it to be named after the Vedic tribe of Bharatas in the second millennium B. C. E and it is also traditionally associated with the rule of the legendary emperor Bharata. Gaṇarājya is the Sanskrit/Hindi term for republic dating back to the ancient times, hindustan is a Persian name for India dating back to the 3rd century B. C. E. It was introduced into India by the Mughals and widely used since then and its meaning varied, referring to a region that encompassed northern India and Pakistan or India in its entirety
6.
Volcano
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A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. Earths volcanoes occur because its crust is broken into 17 major, therefore, on Earth, volcanoes are generally found where tectonic plates are diverging or converging. This type of volcanism falls under the umbrella of plate hypothesis volcanism, Volcanism away from plate boundaries has also been explained as mantle plumes. These so-called hotspots, for example Hawaii, are postulated to arise from upwelling diapirs with magma from the boundary,3,000 km deep in the Earth. Volcanoes are usually not created where two plates slide past one another. Erupting volcanoes can pose hazards, not only in the immediate vicinity of the eruption. Historically, so-called volcanic winters have caused catastrophic famines, the word volcano is derived from the name of Vulcano, a volcanic island in the Aeolian Islands of Italy whose name in turn comes from Vulcan, the god of fire in Roman mythology. The study of volcanoes is called volcanology, sometimes spelled vulcanology, at the mid-oceanic ridges, two tectonic plates diverge from one another as new oceanic crust is formed by the cooling and solidifying of hot molten rock. Most divergent plate boundaries are at the bottom of the oceans, therefore, most volcanic activity is submarine, black smokers are evidence of this kind of volcanic activity. Where the mid-oceanic ridge is above sea-level, volcanic islands are formed, for example, subduction zones are places where two plates, usually an oceanic plate and a continental plate, collide. In this case, the plate subducts, or submerges under the continental plate forming a deep ocean trench just offshore. In a process called flux melting, water released from the subducting plate lowers the temperature of the overlying mantle wedge. This magma tends to be very viscous due to its high content, so it often does not reach the surface. When it does reach the surface, a volcano is formed, typical examples of this kind of volcano are Mount Etna and the volcanoes in the Pacific Ring of Fire. Because tectonic plates move across them, each volcano becomes dormant and is eventually re-formed as the plate advances over the postulated plume and this theory is currently under criticism, however. The most common perception of a volcano is of a mountain, spewing lava and poisonous gases from a crater at its summit, however. The features of volcanoes are more complicated and their structure. Some volcanoes have rugged peaks formed by lava domes rather than a summit crater while others have features such as massive plateaus
7.
Flood basalt
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A flood basalt is the result of a giant volcanic eruption or series of eruptions that coats large stretches of land or the ocean floor with basalt lava. Flood basalt provinces such as the Deccan Traps of India are often called traps, rampino and Stothers cite eleven distinct flood basalt episodes occurring in the past 250 million years, creating large volcanic provinces, plateaus, and mountain ranges. However, more have been recognized such as the large Ontong Java Plateau, Large igneous provinces have been connected to five mass extinction events, and may be associated with bolide impacts. These have a low viscosity, which is why they flood rather than form taller volcanoes. Another explanation is that they result from the release, over a time period. The Deccan Traps of central India, the Siberian Traps, the Mesoproterozoic Mackenzie Large Igneous Province in Canada contains the Coppermine River flood basalts related to the Muskox layered intrusion. The maria on the Moon are additional, even more extensive, flood basalts on the ocean floor produce oceanic plateaus. The surface covered by one eruption can vary from around 200,000 km² to 1,500,000 km², the thickness can vary from 2000 metres to 12,000 m. These are smaller than the original due to erosion. Flood basalts have tholeiite and olivine compositions, the composition of the basalts from the Paraná is fairly typical of that of flood basalts, it contains phenocrysts occupying around 25% of the volume of rock in a fine-grained matrix. These phenocrysts are pyroxenes, plagioclases, opaque crystals such as titanium rich magnetite or ilmenite, sometimes more differentiated volcanic products such as andesites, dacites and rhyodacites have been observed, but only in small quantities at the top of former magma chambers. Subaerial flood basalts can be of two kinds, with a smooth or twisted surface, very compact surface, vesicles are rare, such lava flows may form underground rivers, when degassing fractures and conduits are present, very large flows may reach the surface. With a chaotic surface, the flood is very rich in bubbles of gas, with an irregular. In the Massif Central in Auvergne, France, there is an example of chaotic lava flow, produced by eruptions from Puy de la Vache. Geochemical analysis of the major oxides reveals a close to that of mid-ocean ridge basalts. These are in fact tholeiites with a silicon dioxide percentage close to 50% and it is this contamination that explains the difference between the two kinds of basalt mentioned above. The low phosphorus and titanium type has an excess of elements from the crust such as potassium and strontium, the content in incompatible elements of flood basalts is lower than that of ocean island basalts, but higher than that of mid-ocean ridge basalts. Basalt floods on the planet Venus are larger than those on Earth. S, magmatism at rift zones, The generation of volcanic continental margins and flood basalts
8.
Trap rock
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Trap rock, also known as either trapp or trap, is any dark-colored, fine-grained, non-granitic intrusive or extrusive igneous rock. Types of trap rock include basalt, peridotite, diabase, trapp is also used to refer to flood basalts, i. e. the Deccan Traps and Siberian Traps. The slow cooling of magma either as a sill or as a lava flow sometimes creates systematic vertical fractures within the resulting layer of trap rock. These fractures often form rock columns that are hexagonal. Trap rock, i. e. basalt or diabase, has a variety of uses, a major use for basalt is crushed rock for road and housing construction in concrete, macadam, and paving stones. It is also used for the production of cast rock that is used in corrosion and abrasion protection, as for sewage pipes and it was also used for foundations and railroad beds in the New Haven area. Well-known examples of outcropping trap rock include both intrusive sills and extrusive lava flows and they include the Palisades Sill, a Triassic,200 Ma diabase intrusion that forms the Palisade along 80 kilometers of the Hudson River in New York and New Jersey. Vast areas of rock in the form of thick lava flows and other volcanic rocks comprise the Deccan Traps of India. Devils Postpile National Monument Giants Causeway Organ Pipes National Park List of flood basalt provinces Siberian Traps Deccan Traps Emeishan Traps Viluy Traps
9.
Geology
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Geology is an earth science concerned with the solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Geology can also refer generally to the study of the features of any terrestrial planet. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth by providing the evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life. Geology also plays a role in engineering and is a major academic discipline. The majority of data comes from research on solid Earth materials. These typically fall into one of two categories, rock and unconsolidated material, the majority of research in geology is associated with the study of rock, as rock provides the primary record of the majority of the geologic history of the Earth. There are three types of rock, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. The rock cycle is an important concept in geology which illustrates the relationships between three types of rock, and magma. When a rock crystallizes from melt, it is an igneous rock, the sedimentary rock can then be subsequently turned into a metamorphic rock due to heat and pressure and is then weathered, eroded, deposited, and lithified, ultimately becoming a sedimentary rock. Sedimentary rock may also be re-eroded and redeposited, and metamorphic rock may also undergo additional metamorphism, all three types of rocks may be re-melted, when this happens, a new magma is formed, from which an igneous rock may once again crystallize. Geologists also study unlithified material which typically comes from more recent deposits and these materials are superficial deposits which lie above the bedrock. Because of this, the study of material is often known as Quaternary geology. This includes the study of sediment and soils, including studies in geomorphology, sedimentology and this theory is supported by several types of observations, including seafloor spreading, and the global distribution of mountain terrain and seismicity. This coupling between rigid plates moving on the surface of the Earth and the mantle is called plate tectonics. The development of plate tectonics provided a basis for many observations of the solid Earth. Long linear regions of geologic features could be explained as plate boundaries, mid-ocean ridges, high regions on the seafloor where hydrothermal vents and volcanoes exist, were explained as divergent boundaries, where two plates move apart. Arcs of volcanoes and earthquakes were explained as convergent boundaries, where one plate subducts under another, transform boundaries, such as the San Andreas Fault system, resulted in widespread powerful earthquakes. Plate tectonics also provided a mechanism for Alfred Wegeners theory of continental drift and they also provided a driving force for crustal deformation, and a new setting for the observations of structural geology
10.
Rock formation
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A rock formation is an isolated, scenic, or spectacular surface rock outcrop. Rock formations are usually the result of weathering and erosion sculpting the existing rock, the term rock formation can also refer to specific sedimentary strata or other rock unit in stratigraphic and petrologic studies. Erosion later exposes them in their current form, an example is Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. Metamorphic rocks are created by rocks that have transformed into another kind of rock, usually by some combination of heat, pressure. An example are the Seneca Rocks in West Virginia, igneous rocks are created when molten rock cools and solidifies, with or without crystallization. They may be either plutonic bodies or volcanic extrusives, again, erosive forces sculpt their current forms. An example is Half Dome in Yosemite National Park, geologists have created a number of terms to describe different rock structures in the landscape that can be formed by natural processes, Inselberg or monadnock is a residual relief feature. It can be a hill, a knob, ridge or small mountain that rises abruptly, like an island. Inselberg is a German word that means island mountain, uluru/Ayers Rock in Australia is a noted example. Peak Stack Mesa Butte Escarpment Gorge Sea cliff River cliff Stone run Crag Tor Promontory is a prominent mass of land which overlooks lower lying land or a body of water, here is a list of rock formations by continent
