Probably the safest geologic forecast is that erosion will maintain its continual adjustment of land to equilibrium. As long as weather wets and whets the hills and valleys, Connecticut will continue eroding.

The more distant geologic future of Connecticut depends primarily on where the state is carried and what it is subjected to by the movement of the world's crustal plates. Currently, plate motions are still dominated by trends begun by the rifting apart of Pangaea, 200 million years ago. The Atlantic Ocean continues to grow about an inch wider every year as North and South America move away from Europe, Asia, and Africa. But since the world is round, plates cannot move apart in one region without colliding in another; thus, the Pacific Ocean is growing smaller. Subduction zones and their associated volcanos currently surround the Pacific Ocean with a ring of fire, consuming ocean crust. In contrast, almost no subduction zones and volcanos line the Atlantic. Should this pattern continue for another 200 million years or so, a massive new continental collision is inevitable as the Pacific Ocean closes and the continents reassemble into another Pangaea - but this time the weld will be along the coast of western North America. Connecticut and the rest of the East Coast likely will trail along quietly, away from all the activity as the continents ram each other over in the Pacific. Thus, Connecticut cannot expect another major rejuvenation of its mountains and the addition of more terrorism for a long, long time.

Threads

The threads of history that connect landscape and land use to the geologic past weave a long, complex tapestry. The omission of any event would have greatly changed the outcome of the tapestry, Following any one thread back to its origins reveals ties to a myriad of past events.

- The Housatonic River valley, with its fertile farmland, would not lie in the Northwest Highlands if not for the presence of a belt of marble. The marble belt formed because of a former carbonate bank. That bank would never have existed had there not been a Proto-North America and lapdog Ocean.

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