Lecture: Introduction
1. Geomorphology
a. Study of earth surface processes and landforms.
b. Defines the processes and conditions that influence landform development, and
the physical, morphological, and structural characteristics of landforms.
c. Concentrates primarily on Quaternary (Pleistocene and Holocene) features.
2. Topography
a. Refers to the elevation and relief of the Earth’s surface.
b. Measured by the differences in elevation across the earth’s surface.
c. Differences between high and low elevation are referred to as changes in relief
3. Landforms
a. Individual topographic features exposed on the Earth’s surface.
b. Vary in size and shape and include features such as small creeks or sand dunes,
or large features.
c. Develop over a range of different time-scales. Some landforms develop rather
quickly (over a few seconds, minutes, or hours), such as a landslide, while others
may involve many millions of years to form, such as a mountain range.
d. Landform development can be relatively simple and involve only a few
processes, or very complex and involve a combination of multiple processes and
agents.
e. Landforms are dynamic features that are continually affected by a variety of
earth-surface processes including weathering, erosion, and deposition.
f. Three different ways we can view landforms
i. Topographic Elevation Map
ii. Infrared Areial Photo
iii. Geological Interpretation of surface sediments and geomorphology
4. he word “geomorphology" comes from the Greek roots "geo”, “morph” and “logos”
meaning “earth,” “form” and “study” respectively. Therefore, geomorphology is
literally “the study of earth forms.”
5. Geomorphologists are concerned primarily with earth’s surficial features, including
their origin, history, composition, and impact on human activity.
6. Geomorphology concentrates primarily on Quaternary (Pleistocene and Holocene)
features.
7. Earth’s landforms reflect the local and regional balance between hydrologic,
tectonic, aeolian, glacial, atmospheric, and marine processes.
8. Geomorphology is the study of earth surface processes and landforms.
9. Landforms are the topographic features on the Earth’s surface.
10. Topography refers to the elevation and relief of the Earth’s surface.
11. Three different ways we can view landforms
a. Topographic Elevation Map
b. Infrared Areial Photo
c. Geological Interpretation of surface sediments and geomorphology
12. Topography is measured by the differences in elevation across the earth’s surface.
13. Differences between high and low elevation are referred to as changes in relief.
14. Landforms are dynamic features that are continually affected by a variety of earth-
surface processes including weathering, erosion, and deposition.
15. Crustal Orders of Relief:
a. First Order of Relief: Continental Landmasses and Ocean Basins
The broadest landform scale is divided into continental landmasses, which
include all the crust above sea - level (30% Earth’s surface), and ocean basins,
which include the crustal areas below sea-level (70% of Earth’s surface).
b. Second Order of Relief: Major Continental and Ocean Landforms
Includes regional-scale continental features such as mountain ranges,
plateaus, plains, and lowlands. Major ocean basin features including
continental shelves, slopes, abyssal plains, mid-ocean ridges, and trenches
are all second-order relief landforms.
c. Third order of Relief: Genetic Landform Features
Includes individual landform features that collectively make up the larger
second-order relief landforms. Examples include individual volcanoes,
glaciers, valleys, rivers, flood plains, lakes, marine terraces, beaches, and
dunes. Each major landform categorized within the third order of relief may also
contain many smaller features or different types of a single feature. For
example, although a flood plain is an individual landform it may also contain a
mosaic of smaller landforms including point bars, oxbow lakes, and natural
levees. Rivers, although a single landform, may be classified by a variety of
channel types including straight, meandering, or braided.
16. Geomorphology defines the processes and conditions that influence landform
development, and the physical, morphological, and structural characteristics of
landforms.
17. Uniformitarianism is a common theory held by earth scientists that states “the
present is the key to the past”.
18. Uniformitarianism implies that the processes currently shaping the Earth’s
topography and landforms are the same processes as those which occurred in
the past.
19. Biblical interpretations hindered the proliferation of non-catastrophic landform
evolution theories.
20. In geomorphology, equilibrium refers to no net change, usually in terms of a balance
between deposition and erosion, uplift and downcutting, or soil production and
removal. In short, Erosion, transportation, and deposition.
21. Base level is the level below which erosion cannot occur and above which
deposition does not take place.
22. Sea level is the ultimate base level.
23. Lakes and reservoirs provide temporary base levels.
24. Changes in sea level can be eustatic or relative.
25. Changes in base level create and destroy accommodation space.
26. Systems
a. “An assemblage of parts forming a whole”
b. Fluvial, glacial, coastal
c. Foreland basin, collisional mountains
27. Climate
a. Determines dominant agents
28. Time
a. Reshaping = "Evolution" of landforms/landscapes
29. Systems can dominate large areas.
a. Regions summarized as Physiography Maps
30. Concepts in Geomorphology:
a. Concept 1: The same physical processes and laws that operate today operated
throughout geologic time (present is key to the past), although not necessarily
always with the same intensity as now’.
b. Concept 2: Geologic structure is a dominant control factor in the evolution of
landforms and is reflected in them.
c. Concept 3: Geomorphic processes leave their distinctive imprints upon
landforms and each geomorphic process develops its own characteristic
assemblage of landforms.
d. Concept 4: As the different erosional agents act upon the earth’s surface there is
produced an orderly sequence of landforms having distinctive characteristics
at the successive stages of their development.
e. Concept 5: Geomorphic scale is a significant parameter in the interpretation of
landform development and landform characteristics of geomorphic systems.
Landscape is function of time and space.
f. Concept 6: A simple geomorphological equation may be envisaged as a vehicle
for the explanation of landform as follows
F= f (PM) dt
g. Complexity of geomorphic evolution is more common than simplicity.
h. ‘Little of the earth’s topography is older than Tertiary and most of it no older than
Pleistocene’
i. An appreciation of world climates is necessary to a proper understanding of the
varying importance of the different geomorphic processes.
31. The perceived balance between process and form is created by the interaction of
energy, force, and resistance.
32. Landforms reflect the interaction between the dominant process and the local
geology.
33. Agents of Geomorphic Processes
a. River - Humid Geomorphic Environment
b. Wind - Arid Environment
c. Glacier/ice - Polar Environments
d. Wave - Coastal Environment
34. Geomorphic processes
a. Erosion
b. Transportation
c. Deposition
35. Geomorphic products
a. Erosional landform features
b. Transportation
c. Depositional landform features
36. Constructive processes build landforms through tectonic and depositional
processes.
a. Tectonic processes include movements at plate boundaries, earthquakes,
orogeny, deformation, and volcanic activity.
b. Deposition is the accumulation or accretion of weathered and eroded materials.
37. Destructive processes break down landforms through weathering, erosion, and
mass wasting.
a. Weathering is the disintegration of rocks by mechanical, chemical, and
biological agents.
b. Erosion is the removal and transportation of weathered material by water, wind,
ice, or gravity.
c. Mass wasting is the rapid down-slope movement of materials by gravity.
38. Geomorphic Processes: Physical processes which create and modify on the
surface of the earth.
39. Endogenous Processes are large-scale landform building and transforming
processes.
40. Endogenous Processes create relief.
41. Igneous Processes
a. Volcanism: Volcanic eruptions Volcanoes
b. Plutonism: Igneous intrusions
42. Tectonic Processes (Also called Diastrophism)
a. Folding: anticlines, synclines, mountains
b. Faulting: rift valleys, graben, escarpments
c. Lateral Faulting: strike-slip faults
43. The forces coming from within the earth are called as endogenetic forces which
cause two types of movements in the earth, viz,
a. Horizontal movements
b. Vertical movements.
44. Endogenetic forces introduce various types of vertical irregularities which give birth
to many kinds of relief features on the earth's surface, e.g., mountains, plateaus,
plains, lakes, faults, folds, etc.
45. Diastrophic Forces and Sudden Forces take place mainly along the plate
boundaries, which are the zones that are not stable.
46. Endogenetic processes cause many major landform features.
47. Exogenous Processes also called Gradational Processes, they comprise
degradation and aggradation.
48. Exogenous Processes modify relief.
49. Exogenous Processes are carried through by Geomorphic Agents: gravity, flowing
water (rivers), moving ice (glaciers), waves and tides (oceans and lakes), wind,
plants, organisms, animals and humans.
50. Degradation Processes Also called Denudation Processes
a. Weathering
b. Mass Wasting
c. Erosion and Transportation
51. Aggradation Processes
a. Deposition – fluvial, eolian, glacial, coastal
52. Diastrophic Forces include both vertical and horizontal movements which are
caused due to forces deep within the earth.
53. Diastrophic forces operate very slowly and their effects become discernable after
thousands and millions of years.
54. Diastrophic forces also termed as constructive forces, affect larger areas of the
globe and produce meso-level reliefs, for example, mountains, plateau, plains, lakes,
big faults, etc. subdivided into two groups, namely, epeirogenetic movements and
orogenetic movements.
55. Folding is one of the endogenetic processes.
56. When two forces push towards each other from opposite sides, the rock layers will
bend into folds. The process by which folds are formed are due to compressional
forces known as folding.
57. There are large-scale and small-scale folds. Large-scale folds are found mainly
along destructive plate boundaries.
58. Faulting is the fracturing and displacement of more brittle rock strata along a fault
plane either caused by tension or compression.
59. A break in rock along which a vertical or horizontal rock movement has occurred is
called a fault.
60. The process of forming a fault is faulting.
61. The line of fault which appears on land surface is known as fault line. These lines
are often lines of weakness which allow molten rock to rise up onto the earth surface
when there is active volcanic activity nearby.
62. There are three types of faults which are caused by different endogenetic forces:
a. Normal fault: Compressional force from the plate
b. Reverse fault: Tensional Force from the Plate
c. Tear fault: Diagonal Compressional force from the Plate
63. Faulting forms two major landforms - block mountains and rift valleys.
64. An earthquake is a vibration or oscillation of the surface of the earth caused by
sudden release of enormous pressure.
65. Vulcanicity (also known as volcanic activity or igneous activity) is one of the
endogenetic processes.
66. There are two types of vulcanicity: intrusive vulcanicity and extrusive vulcanicity.
67. It can be concluded that the plates are responsible for the endogenetic processes
and landforms, and glacier, river, wind, atmospheric happenings, etc. are
responsible for the exogenetic process and landforms.
68. Diastrophism is also called tectonism, large-scale deformation of earth’s crust by
natural processes, which leads to the formation of continents and ocean basins,
mountain systems, plateaus, rift valleys, and other features by mechanisms such as
plate movement, volcanic loading, or folding.
69. The processes by which the rocks on the earth’s surface are broken into pieces
through the application of external physical forces and the debris are transported
elsewhere is known as denudation.
70. This denudation work is performed through three processes such as weathering,
erosion, and transportation.
a. Denudation= Weathering + Erosion + Transportation
71. Degradation is the lowering of a bottomland surface through the process of
erosion
72. Conceptually degradation is the opposite of the vertical component of aggradation
and is most frequently applied to sediment removed from a channel bed or other
low-lying parts of a stream channel.
73. Deposition is the constructive process of accumulation into beds or irregular
masses of loose sediment or other rock material by any natural agent.
74. Aggradation is the raising or elevating of a bottomland surface through the
process of alluvial deposition.
75. Conceptually aggradation is the vertical component of accretion and is most
frequently applied to sediment deposition on a channel bed, bar or other near-
channel surfaces, flood plain, or, less often, low-lying alluvial terrace.
76. Sedimentation is the process by which sediment is mechanically deposited from
suspension within a fluid, generally water, or ice, thereby accumulating as layers of
sediment that are segregated owing to differences in size, shape, and composition of
the sediment particles.
77. Mass movement is any downslope transfer, through gravitational and generally
water-facilitated (viscous) processes, of near-surface soil and rock material, which
includes a wide range of ground movements, such as rock fall, deep failure of
slopes and shallow debris flows, which can occur in offshore, coastal, and
onshore environments.
78. Rates of mass movement range from very slow creep to nearly instantaneous
slope failure.
79. Landforms represent the interaction between driving forces and resistance.
80. FOS = Resisting Forces / Driving Forces
81. Thresholds: Changes in the geomorphic system when the limits of equilibrium are
exceeded
a. Extrinsic Thresholds: caused by external controlling factors
b. Intrinsic Threshold: usually caused by internal factors.
82. The genetic landform classification system groups landforms by the dominant set of
geomorphic processes responsible for their formation. Within each of these genetic
classifications, the resulting landforms are a product of either constructive and
destructive processes or a combination of both.
