Structural geology. Fundamentals and modern developments / Структурная геология. Основы и современные разработки

Structural geology deals with the deformation of rocks. After their formation, sedimentary and igneous rocks may remain undisturbed or are deformed to different degrees. A volume of rock may change shape, rotate bodily, fracture or be displaced from one place to another. Such changes may be visible to us, for example, by the tilting of horizontal strata, by development of folds in originally planar beds, by distortion of pebbles, fossils and mineral grains in rocks and by the fragmented character of an originally continuous bed. If these features are in a large scale, their three-dimensional forms are not visible to us; they can be studied only on the eroded surface of the earth. One of the primary objectives of structural geology is to determine three-dimensional forms of these structures mainly from observations on the surface. The first step of structural analysis of an area is to study the geometry of the structures, i.e. to study their morphology and orientation (or attitude), both by direct observation of small structures in the outcrop and by reconstruction of large structures <...>