Weathering of Granite Granite and the Origin of Sediment Activity 2. The Weathering of Granite.
Granites form at great depth in the Earth's crust.
The compressional stresses cause folding, reverse faulting, and thrust faulting. The folding and uplift of reverse faulting raises linear rides of fold mountains thousands of miles long which carry the underlying crustal rocks upward with them, including the deeply buried granites. As rocks are brought above base level, sea level, they begin to be erroded and carried back to sea level as weathered remains of the once solid rocks which ultimately accumulate as sediment and lithify into sedimentary rock. This process is known as The Tectonic Cycle . Both types of weathering occur at the same time, although Decomposition is dominant in humid, subtropical climates such as have existed in the Southeast for several hundred million years.