What are Fold Mountains?

 

Fold mountains are formed when two or more of the Earth's tectonic plates are pushed together, this is a collision and compression of boundaries, rocks and debris are packed and folded into rocky outcrops and hills of mountains and entire mountain ranges.

Folded mountains are formed by a process called orogenesis, which is an orogenic event that takes millions of years to form a folded mountain that is a mantle. Blankets and dramatically folded rocks or rock formations are common. "Nappe" is French for "table cloth" and is believed to be the formation named after the experiment on the table.

Folded mountain ranges are often associated with continental crust. They were formed at the boundaries of convergent plates, sometimes called continental collision zones, in other words compression zones. Convergent plate boundaries are collision points where tectonic plates collide. Compression is described as a set of stresses at one point in a rock formation.

In the comparison zone, tectonic activity forces crustal compression at the leading edge of crustal formation. For this reason, most fold mountains are located on the edge or former edge of continental plate boundaries. Rocks are at the edge of continental crusts. they are often weaker and less stable than rocks found in continental interiors.

This makes them more susceptible to flooding and wrapping. Most folded mountain ranges are composed primarily of sedimentary rocks, and metamorphic rocks are formed under high pressure and relatively low temperatures. Many fold mountains also form where an underlying layer of ductile minerals such as salt is present.

It is the most common type of mountain in the world. The rugged, towering heights of the Himalayas, the Andes and the Alps are all activities that wrinkle the mountains.

The stretch of the Himalayas across the border of China, Bhutan, Nepal, India and Pakistan. The crust beneath the Himalayas is the loftiest mountain range on Earth and is still in the process of being compressed. The Indian plate collides with the Eurasian plate in the north. The sedimentary rocks of the Himalayas include shale and limestone. Metamorphic rocks of the region include slate and gneiss. Dikes of igneous rock are also included throughout the Himalayan rock formation.

The Andes are the largest mountain range in the world, stretching along the entire west coast of South America, from Colombia in the north and through Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina to the south. Here, the dense oceanic crust of the Nazca plate subducts beneath the less dense continental crust of the South American plate. The Andes are the most folded and uplifted of the thicker, less dense rocks of the South American Plate. The sedimentary and metamorphic rocks of the Andes are dotted with active and dormant volcanoes.

The Alps are roughly designated as the top of the "shoe" of the Italian peninsula. The Alps stretch across Italy, Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Monaco and France. This is the small Adriatic microplate colliding with the much larger Eurasian plate to the north.

Fold mountain ranges are sometimes characterized by foothills, depressions that run parallel to the mountain range. The Erbo basin in northern Spain is a foreland that formed with the Pyrenees, a folded mountain range formed by the continental collision of the Iberia microcontinent with the massive Eurasian plate. The Persian Gulf is a pre-western basin that formed with the Zagros Mountains, the Fold Mountain is also a fold mountain formed by the continental collision of the Arabian and Iranian tectonic plates.