Climate and Weathering
Climate is generally considered the most important factor influencing physical and chemical weathering processes.
Physical weathering is especially important during the early stages of soil development. Rock can be disintegrated by changes in temperature which produces differential expansion and contraction. Changes in temperature can also cause water to freeze. The forces produced by water freezing can be as great as 2.1 × 105 kPa, which can split rocks apart, wedge rocks upward in the soil, and heave and churn soil material.
Chemical weathering The principal agent is percolating rainwater charged with carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Parent material becomes hydrolyzed by the acidic solution to produce minerals and to release cations.
Read more about this topic: Parent Material
Famous quotes containing the words climate and/or weathering:
“The question of place and climate is most closely related to the question of nutrition. Nobody is free to live everywhere; and whoever has to solve great problems that challenge all his strength actually has a very restricted choice in this matter. The influence of climate on our metabolism, its retardation, its acceleration, goes so far that a mistaken choice of place and climate can not only estrange a man from his task but can actually keep it from him: he never gets to see it.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“No paradise, no fall,
Only the weathering land
The wheeling sky,
Man, with is Satan
Scouring the chaos of the mind.
Oh Hell!”
—Gary Snyder (b. 1930)