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13.3 How does isostasy relate to active geologic processes?
- Problems with Pratt and Airy isostasy
- These models do explain some geologic situations in a general way but lack in detail and fail to explain certain features at all
- The wood block analogy suffers in two ways
- Assumes a very weak crust and also that faults penetrate through the entire crustal thickness. In reality, upper crust is strong, and faults do not penetrate lower crust due to plastic flow.
- The mantle is almost entirely solid rock, not liquid. Even though mantle flows like a high-viscosity liquid, it is very slow. Adjustments of the crust are limited by the slow flow of mantle from one area to another below regions of changing crustal weight.
- So a more precise analogy might be to think of the crust as a single flexible sheet. The entire model then is more akin to a water bed that responds very slowly—flexural isostasy.