Mexican sky and mountain landscape - this one should speak well to the geologists out there.
Mountains and cities
Astronaut Thomas Pesquet captured this photo from the International Space Station showing the city of Monterrey, Mexico – that nation’s third largest city. Monterrey tucks up against the edge of the Sierra Madre Orientale mountains and this intergrowth of cities and ridges is a common setup worldwide.
The ridges in this frame are classic fold and thrust tectonics – large sheets of rock are forced upwards along fault planes, leading to elongate ridges at the edge of mountain ranges. These faults create paths that groundwater will flow through, and the mountains often create rainfall as airmasses have to move upwards to pass over them and rising air can trigger rain. Cities, therefore, have a habit of growing right along the edge of mountain ranges because those sites have available water. In fact, the ephemeral Santa Caterina River flows through this city and has cut its way through the easternmost ridge, creating land now occupied by the city.
While tectonics also creates the water supply cities like this rely on, it can also put them in harms way as the same faults that have directed flowing water to spots like these also often rupture, causing earthquakes. As human demands for water increase due to growing population, we see this relationship around the world – people crowd into cities near the foothills of mountains where water is abundant, but that water is abundant in that site because of the forces that create seismic hazards.
-JBB
Image credit: Thomas Pesquet https://flic.kr/p/Q5kfGm
Basic details on the city: http://bit.ly/2hMS1Hs
Source: facebook.com