This is a geology question. Please EXPLAIN how you arrive at the answer. This is

Question

This is a geology question. Please EXPLAIN how you arrive at the answer.

This is a map from Kentucky around Pine Mountain. Notice the area labeled "A" in the upper left hand comer of the map. Notice how the formation contacts in the immediate vicinity of the letter are parallel to the contour lines. What does this mean? that the rocks are gently dipping that the rocks are steeply dipping that the rocks are nearly flat lying/not dipping that the rocks don't exist. that you'd better paddle faster.

Explanation / Answer

The fault block, which includes Pine Mountain, actually continues to the southeast into Virginia and Tennessee and is thousands of feet thick. Recent geophysical, geological, and seismological studies of the Reelfoot basin, which underlies the Jackson Purchase and extends southwestward into Missouri, Arkansas, and Tennessee, suggest that it is a fault bounded rift zone which is responsible for the relatively high level of modern seismic activity in the New Madrid earthquake region (McKeown, 1982), which includes much of western Kentucky.

The Appalachian basin in Kentucky contains several major structural features: the Kentucky River and Irvine-Paint Creek fault systems, the Pine Mountain thrust fault, and the Waverly arch of northeastern Kentucky. The Kentucky River fault system has been extended eastward, beyond the surface faults shown on the map as a concealed system that extends into West Virginia. The Irvine-Paint Creek fault system extends eastward from central Kentucky to a terminus near Paintsville (sheet 3 of the geologic map); the southern block is displaced downward as much as 200 ft. The Pine Mountain overthrust fault brings Devonian and younger rocks northwestward over Pennsylvanian rocks with a total displacement of about 7.5 mi.

So as shown in geological map, point A is located on a topographic basin that suggest a meteor-impact origin for the structure on the basis of the presence of shatter cones and other features. Denison and others (1984), in a report on basement rock types and age in Kentucky and adjacent States, indicate that the dominant rock types east of the Grenville Front are granite gneiss, two-feldspar granite, medium-grade metamorphic rock, and anorthosite, while west of the front trachyte, rhyolite basalt, and weakly metamorphosed sedimentary rocks are characteristic. Ages range from about 1,500 to about 1,000 m.y. Denison and others (1984) also show right lateral offset of about 70 mi on the Grenville Front at the Kentucky River fault system and a north-trending basaltic rift zone some 30 mi wide, which coincides with gravity and magnetic highs and extends from south-central Kentucky into Tennessee and Alabama.

Hence due to the above reasons, the answer is the rocks are steeply dipping.

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