Document Type
Thesis
Abstract
The Blue Ridge Mountains, a physiographic province of the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States, rose during a series of Paleozoic orogenies and have remained tectonically quiescent following rifting in the late Triassic (Oyarzun et al., 1997). Surficial uplift of a landscape is balanced by a feedback of increased erosion a therefore, modern topography is thought to be a geologic expression of a landscape’s geomorphologic history (Hack, 1960; Pazzaglia and Brandon, 1996; Willett, 1999). Orogenic landscapes exhibit highest rates of surface uplift and, consequently, the highest erosion rates (Willett, 1999). Yet despite lying on a passive margin for at least 200 million years, the Blue Ridge maintains features characteristic of tectonically active landscapes, such as significant topography, locally high relief, and frequent mass-wasting events (Faill, 1998; Gallen et al., 2011; Wooten et al., 2007). The persistence of Blue Ridge topography poses a question of the dynamics of geomorphologic processes in a tectonically passive landscape, and is one which has been explored by many but whose answer remains uncertain.
Date Awarded
2016
Department
Geology
Recommended Citation
Choi, Tiffanie, "Knickpoints and Erosion Rates: Determining Transience in the Central Blue Ridge, Virginia" (2016). Geology Senior Theses. William & Mary. Paper 356.
https://scholarworks.wm.edu/geologyseniors/356
