Every so often coastline naturally erodes and land falls into the ocean. How do we still have land?
In: Planetary Science
Underneath both the water and the rock on the surface, there’s a whole load more rock – thick plates of solid rock floating on a layer of molten rock – and that rock is moving (albeit very slowly most of the time)
Sometimes two bits/plates of rock run into each other, and one of them buckles, pushing upwards and becoming a mountain range. That mountain range will take a long time to erode down until it’s back at ground level, and in the mean time more mountain ranges will form elsewhere.
Sometimes two bits of rock move apart, and the space in between allows the molten rock from even lower down to flow upwards, creating a volcano. As with mountain ranges, volcanoes take a long time to erode down to nothing, and in the mean time more volcanoes will keep forming.
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