ABCs of Geomorphological Landforms and Features Flashcards
Formed when weathering, together with mass collapse (and in arid areas with wind erosion), creates a tunnel through a slab of rock.
Rock arch (bridge) and window
A wind-eroded depression in the side of a cliff of a homogenous rock type.
Alcoves and yardang windows
Low, triangular-shaped deposits built from the accumulation of sediments deposited at the mouth of a valley (i.e., from a mountains or upland into a larger mainstream valley or lowland)
Alluvial fan
Roughly circular or oval in plan and have surface exposure of over 100 km^2 and it is deep-seated and are usually composed of coarse-grained plutonic rocks.
Batholiths lopoliths, and stock
Submarine, circular, steep-sided holes which occur in coral reefs.
Blue hole
Shake hole, swallow hole, swallet, doline, or cenote
Sinkhole
A compound alluvial fan where neighboring alluvial fans convere into a single apron of deposits against a slope. It may hold very shallow lakes called playas.
Bajada
A small steep-sided and flat-topped hill, built of flat lying soft rocks capped by a more resistant layer of sedimentary rock, lava flow or duricust, surrounded by a plain.
Butte
A deeply incised, steep-sided river valley.
Canyon
An asymmetrical upland feature usually associated with gently dipping rocks and comprising a steep scarp slope (or escarpemnt) and a longer, gentler dip slope.
Cuesta
Also a pericline; formed by tectonic warping, igneous intrusion, or diapir
Dome
A depositional landform produced by sedimentation at and around the mouth of a river; river-, tide-, wave-dominated.
Delta
A large area of sand dunes
Erg
A long winding ridge of stratified sand and gravel that are frequently several km long and are somewhat like railroad embankments.
Esker
A steep slope coinciding with the line of a fault
Fault scarp
Associated with hogback ridges, triangular-shaped remnants of the bed between V-shaped notches, steeply sloping wedge-shaped landscape features created by differential erosion.
Flatirons
A triangular face having a broad base and an apex pointing upward
Triangular facets
German ‘sea of rock’, areas covered by a large angular blocks (formed in situ), traditionally believed to have been created by a freeze-thaw action
Felsenmeer or blockfield
Major splits into limestone pavement, formed by widening, deepening, and eventual merging of solution features that developed along linear weakness in the rock.
Grike (Bogaz)
Small closed depression on horizontal and gently inclined rock surfaces; similar to solution pits in carbonate rocks.
Gnamma (weathering pit or panhole)
A mountaintop that has been modified by the action of ice during glaciation and frost weathering; also pyramidal peak.
Glacial horn
A tall, thin spire of soft (sedimentary) rock topped by harder, more resistant stone that protects each column from erosion.
Hoodoo
Large, perennial, conical, ice-cored mounds that are common in some low-lying permafrost areas dominated by fine-grained sediments, with the ice forming from injected water.
Hydrolaccoliths
Large, freestanding, residual masses of rock and most common and most well known in granitic rocks.
Inselberg (tor/monadnock)
A narrow piece of land connecting two larger areas across an expanse of water that otherwise separates them.
Isthmus
Groups of residual, steep-sided conical-shaped hills produced by limestone solution.
Kegelkarst (cone karst or cockpit karst)
An umbrella term which covers an elaborately diverse group of small-scale solutional features and sculpturing found on limestone and dolomite surfaces exposed at the ground surface or in caves.
Karren
Large spitzkarren
Pinnacle karst
Permafrost mounds formed by ice segregation within mineral soils that occur within the zone of discontinuous permafrost.
Lithalsas (stone rings)
An embankment, natural or manmade, that confines flow during high-water periods.
Levee
Occurs when a meandering river on alluvium eats down into the underlying bedrock.
Incised meander
A prominent limestone hill in an area of tower karst.
Mogote
An elongated cliff-base hollow cut out by abrasion, usually where breaking waves are armed with rock fragments.
Abrasion notch
A point of land, usually high and often with a sheer drop, that extends out into a body of water.
Ness (headland/ promonotory/ cape)
A horse-shoe shaped length of stream channel which is an almost closed meander loop.
Oxbow
Forms just under a boulder, from which the rate of surface lowering may be evaluated
Pedestal
A large karst depression that may sometimes be flooded with water, and which has been formed either by solution, or cavern collapse or for structural reasons.
Polje
A sheet-like surface of rock fragments that remains after wind and water have removed the fine particles. It is covered with closely packed, interlocking angular or rounded rock fragments of pebble and cobble size.
Reg (dessert pavement/ gibber/ hamada)
A long, narrow, often branching inlet formed by marine submergence of parts of a river valley that had previously been incised to a lower sea level.
Ria
Accumulation of broken rock fragments that typically have a concave upwards form. The maximum inclination corresponds to the angle of repose of the mean debris size.
Scree or Talus
An isolated upstanding steep-sided rock pillar, column or pinnacle rising from the shore, a shore platform, or the sea floor close to a cliffed coast
Stack or stump
Cavernous weathering hollows produces in vertical or near-vertical rock faces.
Tafoni in calcareous sandstone
A variety of limestone formed when carbonate minerals precipitate out of ambient temperature water.
Travertine or tufa
A depression or larger hollow in limestone areas produced when several sinkholes or dolines coalesce.
Uvala
Created when magma hardens within a vent on an active volcano. A distinctive upstanding landform produces when erosion removes the surrounding rock while the erosion-resistant plug remains.
Volcanic neck/pipe
Corrosional notches at the cliff foot sometimes have protruding visors above them and plinths below them.
Visor
Notch or abandoned former channel in resistant bedrock ridges that was formerly a water gap when there was insufficient stream power to complete the down cutting process.
Wind gap
A tributary stream that is prevented from joining the main river because of the levees which flank the latter
Yazoo
A streamlined hill carved from bedrock or any consolidated or semi-consolidated materials that resembles the hull of a boat.
Yardang/ Zeugen
Isolated rocks between joints that result from downward erosion of less resistant layers.
Rock fins
