Angel Falls
By Jerrick Lee
Introduction
Welcome, In this presentation I will be talking about my chosen landform 'Angel falls' I will be describing how the landform changes, interpret and explain how it changes, predict what will happen to it in the future, annotate a diagram explaining its formation and more.
Source: http://www.superbwallpapers.com/nature/angel-falls-15234/
Angel Falls
Angel Falls is located in the Guayana highlands, and it is just one of the five great adventure regions in Venezuela, it is the worlds tallest uninterrupted waterfall, standing at 980m in height and 180m in width at the base. More than a million travellers come to view this awe-inspiring site yearly. Angel Falls is 15 times higher than Niagara Falls with its total of approximately 52 meters.
Source: https://www.google.com.hk/maps/search/Angel+Falls,+Venezuela/@5.7943261,-63.4459499,386750m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en
Location
Angel Falls is located in Canaima National Park in Bolivar State, along Venezuela's border with Brazil. It's coordinates are 5.9675ยบ N, 62.5356 W. As you can see above it is in the top half of South America.
Source: http://salto-angel.com/en/angel-falls-venezuela/information/history
The Geology
Angel Falls is part of a plateau known as the 'Guyanese shield' that underlines the lands located in Venezuela to the south of Orinoco River. The plateau's age is estimated to be around two billion years old, it is composed of three main geological formations. The oldest is an underlying igneous-metamorphic basement formed some 1.2-3.6 billion years ago whilst South America was joined to Africa as the supercontinent Gondwanaland. The Guyanese Shield. The geographic region in Venezuela, known as the Guyanese Shield, existed from the start as a great plain at an elevation roughly as high as today's visible tepuis, about 6500 to 9800 feet. Approximately 200 to 400 million years ago, a serious of climate related phenomena such as weathering and erosion caused important changes to the geography of the 'great plain' to make it the landform we all know today.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/WaterfallCreationDiagram.svg/2000px-WaterfallCreationDiagram.svg.png
The origin and development of the landform
The origin of the landscape was rather simple, it was mainly the use of deposition and transportation of the sediments, soil and rock. First, raining developed a waterway. Then the water carved a path in the hard stone until it falls into what is known as a plunge pool (made of soft rocks) Through the timespan of tens of millions of years, the water would then erode at the rock till it forms the base of the waterfall. The transformation of the landscape was due to drastic variations of arid climate to humid and vice versa of strong, constant and lingering precipitations, droughts, freezing, discharges with high and low temperatures; storms, hurricanes, and the tectonic movements of the earth. The erosion was caused by atmospheric agents removing the material deposited in the great plain during millions of years. In places where the rock was softer or 'less resistant' there would be greater erosion meaning that there would be a greater erosion.