How would I explain how the wind may be involved in the formation of sandstone arches?
109971
As the Earth buckled, deep cracks penetrated to the buried sandstone layer.\n\nErosion (wind and rain) wore away exposed rock layers and enlarged the surface cracks, isolating narrow sandstone walls, or fins. \n\nAlternating frosts and thawing caused crumbling and flaking of the porous sandstone and eventually cut through some of the fins.\n\nThe resulting holes were enlarged to arch proportions by rockfalls and weathering (again the effects of wind and rain).
297924
It's "trade winds".\nIt's the wind created by the movement of air from north or south towards the equator.
929539
wind is caused by the movement of air from regions of high atmospheric pressure to regions of low atmospheric pressure.  high pressure is caused by the cooling of air: as air cools, it shrinks and becomes more dense and its pressure therefore increases.  low  pressure is caused by the heating of air: as air warms, it expands and becomes less dense and its pressure therefore decreases.\nrain is caused by the rising of columns of air: when a bubble of air is warmer than its surroundings, it expands and becomes less dense.  this less dense air rises, and as it rises, it gets cooler.  as it cools, it becomes less able to hold moisture.  eventually, you reach a point at which the air can no longer get any cooler without having to lose some moisture.  it is at this point that clouds and rain start to form.\nyou get storms if you have the right combination or rain, wind, air pressure, humidity, and clouds.
156133
<A canyon, or gorge, is a valley walled by cliffs. Most canyons originate by a process of long-time erosion from a plateau level, with a stream gradually carving out its valley. The cliffs form because harder rock strata that are resistant to erosion and weathering remain exposed on the valley walls. Canyons are much more common in arid areas than in wetter areas because weathering has a lesser effect in arid zones. Canyons' walls are often formed of resistant sandstones or granite. Submarine canyons are those which form underwater, generally at the mouths of rivers.
706461
Erosion forms sand\nSand settles as sediment\nSediment hardens over time\nVoila, Sandstone
432932
For it to create artesian conditions it would have to be something that has very low, or no, permeability.  In my experience this is usually unfractured limestone, mudstone, or shale.
467968
Sedimentary rock forms relatively flat. Youngest always on top of the oldest. Just like a stack of newspapers if you were to accumulate them everyday.\n\nFolding from compressional stress is one. Rock is literally pushed together creating anticlines & synclines, upward folding & downward folding arches respectively.\n\nFaults can also do this. This can be accomplished through compressional (pushed together) or tensional (pulled apart) stresses.\n\nI am not too sure about this one but isostatic adjustment could possibly tilt rocks.\n\nHope this helps.\n\n:)
273934
Hot air rises cold air descends.  Do it on a global scale and you get wind.
276560
This is sedimentation. It isn't foundations sinking, although that can happen. It's weathering products. Soil production is one way that things can become buried, as pointed out in the first answer, but for the most part, it is windblown, mass-movement, or water deposition that puts things that were initially on the surface underground.\n\nIt is important to note that there are regions of net deposition and those of net erosion, so not everything will always become buried. Sometimes it is subject to weathering itself. Large stone amphitheaters will fall apart and the pieces will be subject to weathering with will make them look like shapeless boulders. The only other way to get large boulders anywhere is by downhill mass movement, glacial transport, flash floods or by people putting them there.
7478
A Simple Explanation - Opal is formed from a solution of silicon dioxide and water. As water runs down through the earth, it picks up silica from sandstone, and carries this silica-rich solution into cracks and voids , caused by natural faults or decomposing fossils. As the water evaporates, it leaves behind a silica deposit. This cycle repeats over very long periods of time, and eventually opal is formed.  The solution is believed to have a rate of deposition of approximately one centimetre thickness in five million years at a depth of forty metres.\n\nA Detailed Explanation - Occasionally, when conditions are ideal, spheres of silica, contained in silica-rich solutions in the earth form and settle under gravity in a void to form layers of silica spheres. If the process allows spheres to reach uniform size, then precious opal commences to form. For precious opal the sphere size ranges from approximately 150 to 400 nanometres producing a play of colour by diffraction in the visible light range of 400 to 700 nanometres. \n\nEach local opal field or occurrence must have contained voids or porosity of some sort to provide a site for opal deposition. In volcanic rocks and adjacent environments the opal appears to fill only vughs and cracks whereas in sedimentary rocks there are a variety of voids created by the weathering process. Leaching of carbonate from boulders, nodules, many different fossils, along with the existing cracks, open centres of ironstone nodules and horizontal seams provide a myriad of moulds ready for the deposition of secondary minerals such as opal. \n\nMuch of the opal deposition is not precious. It is called "potch" by the miners, or common opal by the mineralogist, as it does not show a play of colour. Opaline silica not only fills the larger voids mentioned but also may fill the pore space in silt and sand size sediments cementing the grains together forming unique deposits, known as matrix, opalised sandstone or "concrete" which is a more conglomeratic unit near the base of early Cretaceous sediments. \n\nThe many variations in the types of opal depends on a number of factors. In particular, the climate provides alternating wet and dry periods, creating a rising or more importantly a falling water table which concentrates any silica in solution. The silica itself is formed either by volcanic origin or by deep weathering of Cretaceous clay sediments producing both silica and white kaolin often seen associated with the Australian opal fields. Special conditions must also prevail to slow down a falling water table in order to provide the unique situation for the production of its own variety of opal.  \n\nThe chemical conditions responsible for producing opal are still being researched, however some maintain that there must be acidic conditions at some stage during the process to form silica spheres, possibly created by microbes.\n\nWhile volcanic-hosted and other types of precious opal are found in Australia, virtually all economic production comes from sediment-hosted deposits associated with the Great Australian Basin. Australia has three major varieties of natural sediment-hosted precious opal - black opals from Lightning Ridge in New South Wales, white opals from South Australia, and Queensland boulder and matrix opal.\n\nBoulder Opal forms in a slightly different method to other types of opal, forming inside an ironstone concretion. The concretion was formed due to ionisation, from sedimentary deposition. By definition, they are ionised concretions of varying hardness with an approximate opal composition of SiO2at 28%, Fe2O3 + AL203 at 68% and H2O at 1% composition.
711092
Wind is the roughly horizontal movement of air (as opposed to an air current) caused by uneven heating of the Earth's surface. It occurs at all scales, from local breezes generated by heating of land surfaces and lasting tens of minutes to global winds resulting from solar heating of the Earth. The two major influences on the atmospheric circulation are the differential heating between the equator and the poles, and the rotation of the planet (Coriolis effect).\n\nGiven a difference in barometric pressure between two air masses, a wind will arise between the two which tends to flow from the area of high pressure to the area of low pressure until the two air masses are at the same pressure, although these flows will be modified by the Coriolis effect in the extratropics.\n\nWinds can be classified either by their scale, the kinds of forces which cause them (according to the atmospheric equations of motion), or the geographic regions in which they exist. There are global winds, such as the wind belts which exist between the atmospheric circulation cells. There are upper-level winds, such as the jet streams. There are synoptic-scale winds that result from pressure differences in surface air masses in the middle latitudes, and there are winds that come about as a consequence of geographic features such as the sea breeze. Mesoscale winds are those which act on a local scale, such as gust fronts. At the smallest scale are the microscale winds which blow on a scale of only tens to hundreds of metres and are essentially unpredictable, such as dust devils and microbursts.\n\nYou could get more information from the link below...
1063787
"Wind is the roughly horizontal movement of air (as opposed to an air current) caused by uneven heating of the Earth's surface. It occurs at all scales, from local breezes generated by heating of land surfaces and lasting tens of minutes to global winds resulting from solar heating of the Earth. The two major influences on the atmospheric circulation are the differential heating between the equator and the poles, and the rotation of the planet (Coriolis effect)."
1008362
A lot of wind current is caused by temperature differentials between two or more areas.  The earth's rotation is also responsible for currents and jet streams.  I had a porfessor tell me that the same wind that is blowing now is the same wind that has been blowing for 4 billion years.
374572
to brandijo-ALL of it was under water.  That's how limestone, sandstone, and shale form.  Once the layers of rock were there water eroded them on a large scale to form the canyon.  The top layer at grand canyon is called Kaibab limestone and it is about 200 million years old.\n\nAs for strange things about grand canyon...In the canyon use to live a native american tribe called the Anazi(sp?).  They disappeared and no one knows where or why they went.  Their cliff dwellings have been explored and it's like one day they just up and left and didn't bother to pack like they were coming back someday.\n\nAnother strange incident is the story of a newlywed couple that disappeared on their honeymoon.  I can't remember their names or the details, but there is quite a bit about it in the book "Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon"  Really great book.
39514
Water, wind and ice can all cause erosion in rocks.  Wind will often blow small bits of sand or pebbles at a rock, which can wear it down.\nWater does something similar, slowly wearing down a rock over time.  This is why you often find round stones in and around rivers.\nWater also gets into the cracks of a rock.  As the water freezes, it expands and causes bits of the rock to break off.
1143888
it is probably because of the winds and their directions
52842
A desert is defined by its low rainfall record, hence why you can get hot, cold and frigid deserts.\n\nDeserts can be caused by a number of factors, for example mountains surrounding the area cause rain to fall on their slopes rather than further inland so creating the arid conditions.(can't think of an example for this but there are several)\n\nThe area may be so far inland that the damp winds from the sea fail to reach it.  When combined with a hot climate severe desert conditions occur. (Death Valley)\n\nThere may be a cold current running along the coast which causes coastal fog and precipitation, preventing it raining inland. (Patagonian Desert)\n\nThe sand is the product of weathering on the rock, the hot temperatures during the day cause the rocks to expand, the rocks are made up of different minerls and colours of crystals (grains) due to colour some expand more than others, this can break the rock surface down. (Intergranular errosion).  The wind picks up the bits and hits them against other rocks, turning the lumps to powder (mechanical errosion).\n\nwhen rain does fall the water scours rock debris off the surface causing the pieces to rub over each other (more mechanical errosion).  When drying out in the heat the water evapourates leaving salt deposits behind, these can dissole minerals in the rock (chemical errosion) and can cause slat pillars which are capable of lifting erroded rock layers off the surface.