Basin Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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A basin is an area of land that is lower than the surrounding land. Many basins form lakes because water flows down into the lower land; however, this does not always happen. When the basin occurs underwater, for example in sea floors, then it makes little difference-as is also the case for the Kalahari Desert basin, around which all of the land receives too little precipitation or river flow to create a lake. In other cases, the flow of water is accompanied by sediment of different types and, eventually, this can cause significant filling up of the depression. In any case, the long-term changes in climate and terrain mean that any particular configuration will not be permanent. Many hydrocarbon resources are formed as the result of the presence of basins.

Basins were created principally through tectonic activity in the distant past. The interaction of tectonic plates causes some areas of land to rise and some to fall. Pressure caused by plates causes unevenness in other plates, and thus basins are formed. These can be very large. The Aral Sea and the Black Seas are examples of basins, as too are some of the lakes of central Africa and the Great Basin on South Australia.

The science of limnology is used to help classify the different types of basins. This is necessary because tectonic interactions can form basins in a number of different ways, for example by damming valleys, uplifting some surrounding area, or forcing a lower plate against a higher one. Basins may be distinguished from depressions, which are a broader group of phenomena that includes lower ground caused by meteor impact and crater formation, wind erosion, and other weathering effects. They may also be formed by volcanic activity and lava flows. Multiple factors may of course work together to create complex basin-like configurations.

Those basins into which water flows create standing bodies of water forming as lakes. As the water flows, it collects dissolved salts and small pieces of rock in suspension. These are known collectively as sediment, which are deposited in the lakes as their final destinations of the rivers. The weight of the combined sediment may cause additional subsidence of the original basin floor and may be associated with the formation of geological faults giving rise to earthquakes. Under certain circumstances, sedimentation may lead to conditions that give rise to the creation of complex chemical products, notably hydrocarbons such as oil and natural gas. Sedimentation also has an impact on the quality of soil in an area, and hence, the agricultural value of the land.

Bibliography:

P.A. Allen and John R. Allen, Basin Analysis: Principles and Applications, 2nd ed. (Black-well Publishing, 2005);
Andrew D. Miall, The Geology of Pluvial Deposits: Sedimentary Pacies, Basin Analysis, and Petroleum Geology (Springer, 2006);
Open University, The Ocean Basins: Their Structure and Evolution, 2nd (Butterworth-Heinemann, 1998).