A mountain is a naturally formed piece of high land above the ground, usually more than 100 meters above the ground. This is a magical landscape formed by nature. Whether it is called a mountain depends on the local people.
There are three main types of mountains: volcanic, folded and massive. All three types are formed by plate tectonics: when parts of the crust move, collapse and dive. Compressive forces, isostatic uplift and intrusion of igneous material force the surface rock upward, creating a terrain higher than surrounding features. The height of the feature makes it a mountain, or if higher and steeper, a mountain.
1. Volcanoes
Major mountain ranges tend to appear in long linear arcs, indicating tectonic plate boundaries and activity. Volcanoes form when a plate is pushed under another plate or at a mid-ocean ridge or hot spot.
At a depth of about 100 kilometers, lava occurs in the rock above the plate (due to the addition of water) and forms magma that reaches the surface. When magma reaches the surface, it usually builds a volcano, such as a shield volcano or stratovolcano.
Examples of volcanoes include Mount Fuji in Japan and Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines. Magma doesn't have to reach the surface to form a mountain: magma solidifying underground can still form domed mountains, like Mount Navajo in the United States.
2. Fold Mountains
When the two plates are shortened along the thrust fault, the over-acceleration of the crust creates a folded mountain. Since the lower-density continental crust floats on the denser mantle rocks below, the weight of any crustal material forced upward to form hills, plateaus, or mountains must balance the mantle by pressing down into a larger volume of buoyancy.
As a result, continental crust is usually thicker under mountains than in low-lying areas. Rocks can be folded symmetrically or asymmetrically. A fold is an anticline, a lower fold is a syncline, and in asymmetrical folds, there may also be reclining and flip folds. The Jura Mountains are an example of a folded mountain range.
3. Block Mountain
Block mountains are caused by faults in the Earth's crust: planes where a rock moves past each other. When rocks on one side of a fault rise relative to rocks on the other side, it can form a mountain. The raised blocks are block hills or horseshoes. Inserted descending blocks are called grabens: these may be small or form extensive rifting systems.
Landscapes of this form can be seen in the Vosges Mountains in East Africa, the Basin and Mountains Provinces in western North America, and the Rhine Valley. These regions often occur when the regional stress is stretched and the crust thins.
The longest mountain range in the world is the Andes. The Andes is not only the longest mountain range in the Americas, but also the longest mountain range in the world. It stretches 9,000 kilometers from north to south and covers an area of 1.8 million square kilometers. The altitude is mostly above 3000 meters.
The largest mountain range in the world is the Himalayas-Karakoram, which contains 96 peaks with a height of over 7315.2 meters. However, the real largest mountains are on the ocean floor, in the Cordillera Mountains, which stretch from the Indian Ocean to the eastern Pacific Ocean.
