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Exfoliating slabs of granite, on Half Dome in Yosemite National Park, USA. Exfoliating granite is a granite undergoing exfoliation, or onion skin weathering (desquamation).The external delaminated layers of granite are gradually produced by the cyclic variations of temperature at the surface of the rock in a process also called spalling.
Exfoliation joints following the topography of inclined valley walls, bedrock hill slopes, and cliffs can create rock blocks that are particularly prone to sliding. Especially when the toe of the slope is undercut (naturally or by human activity), sliding along exfoliation joint planes is likely if the joint dip exceeds the joint's frictional ...
Exfoliation joints are sets of flat-lying, curved, and large joints that are restricted to massively exposed rock faces in a deeply eroded landscape. Exfoliation jointing consists of fan-shaped fractures varying from a few meters to tens of meters in size that lie sub-parallel to the topography. The vertical, gravitational load of the mass of a ...
Physical weathering, also called mechanical weathering or disaggregation, is the class of processes that causes the disintegration of rocks without chemical change. Physical weathering involves the breakdown of rocks into smaller fragments through processes such as expansion and contraction, mainly due to temperature changes.
Spheroidal or woolsack weathering in granite on Haytor, Dartmoor, England Spheroidal weathering in granite, Estaca de Bares, A Coruña, Galicia, Spain Woolsack weathering in sandstone at the Externsteine rocks, Teutoburg Forest, Germany Corestones near Musina, South Africa that were created by spherodial weathering and exposed by the removal of surrounding saprolite by erosion.
Columnar jointing in Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland Columnar jointing in the Alcantara Gorge, Sicily. Columnar jointing is a geological structure where sets of intersecting closely spaced fractures, referred to as joints, result in the formation of a regular array of polygonal prisms (basalt prisms), or columns.
The lowering of a fluvial surface, such as a stream bed or floodplain, through erosional processes. dendrite A crystal that develops with a typical multi-branching tree-like form. Denudation The lowering of the earth's surface through chemical and physical weathering. deposition The geological process by which material is added to a landform or ...
Exfoliation (from the term "foliate", meaning “related to leaves”) means the removal or loss of leaves from a plant. It is used both to describe the loss of a leaves as a natural part of a plant's life cycle (such as in the case of deciduous trees which lose their leaves in the autumn) or because of some trauma or outside cause (such as ...