Is Pine Mountain, that runs along the border of Virginia and Kentucky part of the Plateau province or the Ridge and Valley province? It's a long irregular curved ridge running ~ 120 miles continuously from Cumberland Gap to Russell Fork and some geology sources seem to regard it as an extension of the allegheny front, which is both the separation point where the plateau begins running westward, and also where the terrain is most markedly divergent in steepness from east (much more) to west (much less).But if you just look at a map, both Pine and Cumberland/Stone/Black mountains seem to be up on the plateau and the true Allegheny Front is at Osborne ridge roughly where Flag Rock is outside Norton, Virginia for example. Norton would be on the plateau, the other side (Dungannon) would be the first valley of the ridge and valley as the terrain gradually flattens eastward towards the sea.The terrain SE of Pine Mountain has diagonal/dendritic shaped creeks - rather than the perpendicularly arranged creeks running 90 degrees into the river valley that you see in the ridge and valley.So are these papers wrong, and in fact Pine Mountain is not the edge of the plateau or what is going on here? Why would a plateau have a long ridgeline like this geologically?
Draw a diagram on a satalite photo please. Im a big fan of conglomerates and sandstone and plateaus.
>>2754126I blame the meteor that hit Canada.
>>2754243Apparently there is a meteor involved that fell near Cumberland Gap, creating one of the towns there, but I'm not sure if it supposedly helped etch the gap itself. ok so red is pine mountain, purple is cumberland/big stone mountainand blue is osborne ridge/little stone mountain I think its also called powell mountain to the SWits hard to make out the allegheny front but there appears to be dendritic creeks even on the SE slopes of Pine/Cumberland mountains so those can't be the allgheny/cumberland front, whereas you see the classic shape of the plateau boundary progressing into the steepest hollers on the ridge and valley side of the edge of the plateau (glady fork of stony creek being the steepest)For whatever reason, the plateau has more prominent ridges than the ridge and valley there, which is really unusual, but that's how the terrain seems to be set up, or maybe I'm not understanding the nuance here.
>>2754270The meteor was the best idea I had.It's pretty much in the middle of the Caribbean Plate but on the edge of the North American Craton. If you see something similar or related in Western Montana and Wyoming that could be another clue.
>>2754306The meteor only accounts for the Cumberland Gap, and even then supposedly just one town in it not the gap itself which frankly I have no idea how that was created. its more like uneven pressure waves or something because really I guess you are looking at pressure waves right
>>2754310Well aren't you scalar.There was a very big rock that hit Xinjiang that could explain quite a few flood myths.Or maybe a tortional artifact from the last time the centripetal axis moved significantly beyond its shorter period "wobble".
>>2754402I'm no sort of formal geologist, just interested in the shape of land for more aesthetic purposes.
>>2754442
>>2754934ok this does not help at all
>>2754942Link the papers dude. I don't know what you're asking at this point.
>>2755166https://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/p1151h/structure.htmlThe Appalachian basin is divided structurally into an eastern highly deformed part, the fold-and-thrust province, and a western mildly deformed part referred to as the Appalachian Plateaus; the latter include the Cumberland Plateau of Kentucky and Tennessee. The boundary between these two structural provinces, the Allegheny Front, is placed by many workers at the Pine Mountain overthrust (fig. 16), resulting in the inclusion of the Cumberland thrust sheet of southeasternmost Kentucky in the fold-and-thrust province.I can't find the other ones, but basically multiple papers claim Pine Mountain is the border of ridge and valley and plateau, but really it's powell mountain which runs basically all the way to Knoxville.
>>2755294The maps in the attached paper are for locational reference only and are not useful for seeing the geological divisions. What maps are you actually using? This was probably all solved by rock surveys as well as the aerial photography.
>>2755546kind of a mix of USGS topo and Google Maps on the terrain setting. I mean the real giveaway is tributaries that run roughly perpendicular to the larger bodies of water they flow into (ridge and valley) vs. diagonally (plateau)
>>2755553Hmm, interesting. I don't usually look at the tectonics. Not my scale in the size domain. I think you're aligning the horizontal slice and the vertical slice at an offset. You seem to be aligning the pine mountain thrust faut differently than described. I don't think that vertical slice includes the feature you're describing. They lined everything up with the mineral surveys.
>>2755563Sorry, wrong version. Hopefully this makes more sense.
>>2755563something about an upthrust faultthe basic idea is that there's a long ridge, where there usually, geologically, would NOT be a long ridge, like if you look at northern pa it is more lke the classic dendrites in this curvy oblong shapeI assume pine mountain is mainly like sandstone pushed together, it in't a quartzite ridge like the ones in the ridge and valley are backed by its mainly about imagining the pressure wave of africa smacking into the tethys sea and pushing up those layers of ocean bottom but the direct pressure waves sort of fizzle I guess by the time they reach the allegheny front - thats the extent of the pressure wave, so its a different process pushing it upsomething like thatim not a geologist, just an appreciator of land shapes and squiggly hills
see this shape, you see landforms like this all over the ridge and valley, most notably at Burke's Garden but usually not a circular shape, usually this semi-circle shape. So we know this terrain, SSW of Big Stone Gap, is ridge and valley. There's three main (synclines?) hills in play here - pine, cumberland, and powell, running ne to SEpowell runs all the way to west of Knoxvillefor whatever reason it looks like the allegheny front section - where ridge and valley merges with plateau, is just not that prominent looking on the map its not a sheer face like cumberland mountain is, its an array of diagonal hollers falling off of it like little stony creek so somehow the geologists are saying pine mountain is the front, also black mountain seems to run in between pine and cumberland, but not in the same direction, and is in fact the highest ridge of allso there's a lot of really interesting terrain here
>>2755566
>>2755566I still think you need to look at the Craton's placement on the Caribbean plate. I think you're zooming in too much and aren't seeing the forest from the trees.
>>2755733sorry, north American plate.
>>2755733usually there's a very defined, demarcated shift where the land on one side of the boundary looks quite different from the land on the other side.
I thought there might be a geologist floating around here.
look what I found, not the same area, but similar terrainso it looks like the plateau has a lot younger rocks closer to the surface whereas the surface of the ridge and valley is millions of years older and there's a discontinuity along the fault between the ridge and valley and plateauI guess maybe there's multiple faults along pine mountain interacting and that might be what is so confusing
I'm more interested in geography I hate that I can't live in the coolest geographic regions of America due to various reasons (money, sociopolitical reasons, government owns it)
>>2757225what are the coolest geographic regions of America?
