Without hot rock, much of North America would be underwater

“If you subtracted the heat that keeps North American elevations high, most of the continent would be below sea level, except the high Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada and the Pacific Northwest west of the Cascade Range,” says study co-author Derrick Hasterok, a University of Utah doctoral student in geology and geophysics.

“We have shown for the first time that temperature differences within the Earth’s crust and upper mantle explain about half of the elevation of any given place in North America,” with most of the rest due to differences in what the rocks are made of, says the other co-author, David Chapman, a professor of geology and geophysics, and dean of the University of Utah Graduate School.

From EurekaAlert