Haryana

• 29 May 2024

Aravalli Fire

Why in News?

As temperatures rose, a forest fire broke out in the Aravallis near Surajkund in Faridabad.

• Despite the fire department successfully putting out the flames within half an hour, locals claimed that several acres of land and trees had already been burnt.

Key Points

• Aravallis are fold mountains of which rocks are formed primarily of folded crust, when two convergent plates move towards each other by the process called orogenic movement.
  • The Aravallis of Northwestern India, one of the oldest fold mountains of the world, now form residual mountains with an elevation of 300m to 900m. They stretch for a distance of 800 km. from Himmatnagar in Gujarat to Delhi, spanning Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Delhi, the 692 kilometre.
    • The hidden limb of the Aravallis that extends from Delhi to Haridwar creates a divide between the drainage of rivers of the Ganga and the Indus.
• The Aravallis date back to millions of years when a pre-Indian subcontinent collided with the mainland Eurasian Plate. Carbon dating has shown that copper and other metals mined in the ranges date back to at least 5^th century BC.
• The mountains are divided into two main ranges – the Sambhar Sirohi Range and the Sambhar Khetri Range in Rajasthan, where their extension is about 560 km.