ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Epeirogenic movement

Epeirogenic movement is a big fancy word that talks about how the surface of the earth gradually moves up or down over a really long period of time. Imagine a big, flat piece of bread dough. If you push down on one side of the dough, that side will get squished down, and the other side will rise up. That's what epeirogenic movement is like, but it happens on the Earth's crust instead of in a kitchen.

This type of movement can happen for a lot of reasons, like if there's a lot of pressure building up under the ground, or if the Earth's tectonic plates (the big pieces of the Earth's crust that float around on top of the molten rock inside the Earth) are shifting in certain ways. When epeirogenic movement happens, it can cause all kinds of changes to the landscape. Mountains can form, valleys can get deeper, and even the ocean floor can change.

So, just like bread dough, the Earth's surface can move up and down very slowly, over a long time. This is called epeirogenic movement, and it can change the world around us in big ways.