Isostatic Adjustments And Tectonic Movement Are Influenced By The Asthenosphere

Two of the earth's biggest structures are our oceans and continents, which sit on tectonic plates. The interactions between tectonic plates and oceans are one big influence that can determine the earth’s climate and as a result of that can contribute to climate change.

When the Ice Age caused the sea level to drop, it exposed a land bridge from

These formations caused the water level in many lakes to drop, and flow into rivers. With the weight of the glacier removed from the land, isotonic equilibrium occurred. The region began to rise, at a rate of about thirty centimeters per century (Leelanau, 2004). Water levels in the upper basin began to rise, forming lakes that filled the Michigan, Huron and Superior basins. Today, this isotonic rebound is still occurring, but at a rate of 53 centimeters per century. The rebound occurs at different rates across the area that was covered by the glacier. The difference in rates emerges from the difference in weight of the glacier. Areas that are rising the fastest today are those that had a thicker or heavier glacial ice, or those areas that had ice covering those most recently. Because of the difference in rates, the lower basin rose more slowly that the northern outlets (Leelanau, 2004). As the water changed directions to flow through the St. Clair River, the shape of the Great Lakes reached a point close to what they are at today. The shorelines and water level has changed, but the basic flow of water has stayed the same for the past 2,000 or so

The breaking of continental ice from Greenland and the Antarctic has been slowly breaking off and melting for a long time. The continental ice which has broken off melts faster and faster as it drifts towards the equator, eventually deposing all the fresh water ice into the ocean. This process, which would slowly drown the coastlines of the entire world, including Canada, is very dangerous for the survival of human civilizations. Due to Canada’s larger and more exposed urban coastal regions, it will suffer a harder blow than most other countries. Islands like Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia will be hit particularly hard, losing a lot of its farmland and coastal towns due to the melting and breaking off of continental ice. The continental ice

Plate Tectonics The creation of the landmass we know today to be the great Canadian Shield wouldn’t have been possible without the driving force of plate tectonics. The process started 3 Billion years ago when the geological terrain of the shield was once separated land masses, taking more than 800 million years to come together to form the land we know today The Canadian Shield was formed when two tectonic plates collided, when they collided, a folding occurred. The plate was forced down, melting and rose back to the surface to cool down over time.

and come apart and allow for countless sheets of lava to be transferred out over the land (Hay, 1992). Through time the ice caps frequently collected and spread over enormous extents in North America. In this timeframe, movements to the south would occur making the ice push and relocate expansive quantities of soils and rocks. This movement effected how the great glacial streams would flow (Hay, 1992). With the extremely large rains and glacial ice melting valleys and flooding played a great role in the Pleistocene.

Firstly, Canadians suffered due to the Dustbowl in the Prairies. From 1929 to 1937, the Prairie provinces were hit with an unfortunate drought that affected around 7.3 million hectares of land (Hill). This

Plate tectonics is the scientific theory that attempts to explain the movements of the Earth's lithosphere that have formed the landscape features we see across the globe today” (Briney). Geology defines “plate” as a large slab of solid rock, and “tectonics” is part of the Greek root word for “to build.” Together the words define how the Earth’s surface is built up of moving plates. The theory of plate tectonics dictates that individual plates, broken down into large and small sections of rock, form Earth’s lithosphere. These fragmented bodies of rock move along each other atop the Earth’s liquid lower mantle to create the plate boundaries that have shaped Earth’s landscape. Plate tectonics originated from meteorologist Alfred Wegener’s theory, developed in the early 20th century. In 1912, he realized that the east coast of South America and the west coast of Africa appeared to piece together like a jigsaw puzzle. He further examined the globe and deduced that all of Earth’s continents could somehow be assembled together and proposed the idea that the continents had once been linked in a single supercontinent called Pangaea. To explain today’s position of the continents, Wegener theorized that they began to drift apart approximately 300 million years ago. This theory

1. The geology of Ontario is divided into three layers of rock. The first layer, Precambrian Canadian Shield rocks, is composed of mainly igneous and metamorphic rocks from the Precambrian Eon. This layer is the eldest at approximately 3-0.8x109 years old and is therefore the bottom-most layer (L). Although this layer is largely found in the Canadian Shield region of Ontario, glacial erratics from the Precambrian layer can be found at the Don Valley Brickyard (L). In the GTA, younger sediments and rocks cover the Precambrian rock layer (L). The second layer is Paleozoic rock, composed of sedimentary rocks
. It was deposited 600-400 million years

The world and its features we see surrounding us today have not been the same throughout all of time . A lot of people believe that the way the Earth looks today is the way it has looked since the beginning. This belief is far from true. The Earth has a history that has evolved over time just like everything else. We can view the history by examining the Earth’s crust in areas. The region of the Earth that is presently known as Canada has the world’s oldest history which makes it unique. Throughout this paper I will discuss how the area known as Canada became what it is.

In addition to the astounding features created by the glaciers, their movement and disappearance also created an interesting interaction between the lithosphere, asthenosphere, cryosphere, and hydrosphere. Isostasy is the interaction between the stiff lithosphere and the

Winter is in the form of permafrost is under much of the region.(Government of Canada, 2010) The Arctic has went through some of earth's first and greatest effects of climate change. But the Hudson Bay Lowlands have remained resistant to warming (National Geographic, 2013)

Climate itself adjusts time to time however recently it’s been noted that it’s been getting warmer more rapidly than expected, which in turn has melted ice sheets in the artic.The change the Artic will have an impact on the earth.

In the middle of the eighteenth century, James Hutton proposed a theory, uniformitarianism; “the present is the key to the past”. It held that processes such as geologic forces- gradual and catastrophic-occurring in the present were the same that operated in the past. (Matt Rosenberg, 2004) This theory coincides with the theory of Continental Drift that was first proposed by Abraham Ortelius in December 1596, who suggested that North, South America, Africa and Eurasia were once connected but had been torn apart by earthquakes and floods. He also discovered that the coasts of the eastern part of South America and the

Scientists have discovered 'climate forcing’s ' influence variations in climate systems and based on the depth and period of such forcing’s the adjustments to climate may be in a shorter or longer earth cycle. Natural forcing’s like variations in earth 's orbit, solar variation, volcanic eruptions and motion of tectonic plates have influence on the Earth 's climate