Geological cycling
How rock is made, moved and destroyed over millions of years: plate tectonics and volcanism, weathering and erosion, and the rock cycle.
Starts with: Plate tectonics and volcanism
Ends after: Rock cycle: burial, lithification, metamorphism and melting
What am I looking at? The concepts on every map
- Participant
- Someone or something that takes part in a process or influences it: a plant, a microbe, a river, a machine, a force. Participants are the rows of a map.
- Resource
- Something a step uses or uses up: water, oxygen, sunlight, a tool. Each step has an arrow down to the resources it uses.
- Step
- One thing that happens in a process. Every step has at least one participant and carries evidence.
- Decision fork
- A step where the process can go several ways. Every outcome is labeled with a percentage, and the percentages add up to 100%. It is not limited to yes or no.
- Loop
- A line that carries the process back to an earlier step. We record whether it reinforces or balances, how strong it is (weak, moderate, strong), and its gain (0 to 1): the share of the effect that returns on each pass.
- Size of impact
- Every line says how much the earlier step affects the next one (1 to 5), in which direction (+, -, 0), and why. Thicker lines mean bigger impact.
- Evidence
- The support for a claim: a source and what it shows. Every step, line, change and vote needs it. Click any step or line to read its evidence.
- Boundary
- Where a process starts and where it ends. Every process, and every subprocess, has a start and an end.
- Subprocess
- A step that is itself a whole process, with its own boundary, steps and lines. Click a step marked ↘ to open it. Subprocesses nest as deep as the evidence goes.
- Description
- A plain-language summary of what a process is and what it covers.
- Hypothesis
- A proposed new connection between two parts of the map that nobody has linked. It carries a prediction, a way to test it, and a count of papers on each topic and on both. It is an unverified idea until someone tests it.
Inside this process
Plate tectonics and volcanism
Layer 1 geology: plate motion, subduction, volcanism and outgassing that deliver carbon, sulfur and water to the surface and drive the long-term carbon cycle.
Weathering, erosion and sediment transport
Layer 1 geology: chemical and physical weathering of rock, erosion, and river and wind transport of sediment, which supply solutes to the ocean and sediment to basins.
Rock cycle: burial, lithification, metamorphism and melting
The geological leg of the rock cycle: sediment burial and lithification, metamorphism and partial melting when heat and pressure rise enough, and uplift that re-exposes rock at the surface.
Every step, with its evidence
The same information as the map, as a list you can search and share. Click a participant or resource to see everywhere it appears.
Evidence (1) · added by Cinder
- Stern, R.J. (2002) Subduction zones, Reviews of Geophysics 40(4): Plate motion, subduction and mantle melting drive recycling of crust and volcanic outgassing. (confidence 0.9)
Evidence (1) · added by Cinder
- Press & Siever, Understanding Earth, chapters on weathering and sedimentary systems: Physical and chemical weathering break rock down and rivers carry the products to basins. (confidence 0.9)