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Landform - Wikipedia

A landform is a natural or artificial feature on the surface of the Earth or other planetary body. Landforms include hills, mountains, canyons, and valleys. They are categorized based on attributes such as elevation, slope, and soil type. The four major types of landforms are mountains, hills, plateaus, and plains. The scientific study of landforms is called geomorphology.

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73 views

Landform - Wikipedia

A landform is a natural or artificial feature on the surface of the Earth or other planetary body. Landforms include hills, mountains, canyons, and valleys. They are categorized based on attributes such as elevation, slope, and soil type. The four major types of landforms are mountains, hills, plateaus, and plains. The scientific study of landforms is called geomorphology.

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Landform

A landform is a natural or artificial feature


of the solid surface of the Earth or other
planetary body. Landforms together make
up a given terrain, and their arrangement in
the landscape is known as topography.
Landforms include hills, mountains,
plateaus, canyons, and valleys, as well as
shoreline features such as bays,
peninsulas, and seas, including
submerged features such as mid-ocean
ridges, volcanoes, and the great ocean
basins.

This conical hill in Salar de Arizaro, Salta, Argentina


called Cono de Arita constitutes a landform.

Physical characteristics
Landforms are categorized by
characteristic physical attributes such as
elevation, slope, orientation, stratification,
rock exposure, and soil type. Gross
physical features or landforms include
intuitive elements such as berms, mounds,
hills, ridges, cliffs, valleys, rivers,
peninsulas, volcanoes, and numerous
other structural and size-scaled (e.g.
ponds vs. lakes, hills vs. mountains)
elements including various kinds of inland
and oceanic waterbodies and sub-surface
features. Mountains, hills, plateaux, and
plains are the four major types of
landforms. Minor landforms include
buttes, canyons, valleys, and basins.
Tectonic plate movement under the Earth
can create landforms by pushing up
mountains and hills.
This panorama in Great Smoky Mountains
National Park has the readily identifiable
physical features of a rolling plain, actually part
of a broad valley, distant foothills, and a
backdrop of the old, much weathered
Appalachian mountain range

Hierarchy of classes

Karst towers landforms along Lijiang River, Guilin,


China
Oceans and continents exemplify the
highest-order landforms. Landform
elements are parts of a high-order
landforms that can be further identified
and systematically given a cohesive
definition such as hill-tops, shoulders,
saddles, foreslopes and backslopes.

Some generic landform elements


including: pits, peaks, channels, ridges,
passes, pools and plains.

Terrain (or relief) is the third or vertical


dimension of land surface. Topography is
the study of terrain, although the word is
often used as a synonym for relief itself.
When relief is described underwater, the
term bathymetry is used. In cartography,
many different techniques are used to
describe relief, including contour lines and
TIN (Triangulated irregular network).

Elementary landforms (segments, facets,


relief units) are the smallest homogeneous
divisions of the land surface, at the given
scale/resolution. These are areas with
relatively homogeneous morphometric
properties, bounded by lines of
discontinuity. A plateau or a hill can be
observed at various scales ranging from
few hundred meters to hundreds of
kilometers. Hence, the spatial distribution
of landforms is often scale-dependent as
is the case for soils and geological strata.

A number of factors, ranging from plate


tectonics to erosion and deposition, can
generate and affect landforms. Biological
factors can also influence landforms— for
example, note the role of vegetation in the
development of dune systems and salt
marshes, and the work of corals and algae
in the formation of coral reefs.

Landforms do not include man-made


features, such as canals, ports and many
harbors; and geographic features, such as
deserts, forests, and grasslands. Many of
the terms are not restricted to refer to
features of the planet Earth, and can be
used to describe surface features of other
planets and similar objects in the Universe.
Examples are mountains, hills, polar caps,
and valleys, which are found on all of the
terrestrial planets.

The scientific study of landforms is known


as geomorphology.

In onomastic terminology, toponyms


(geographical proper names) of individual
landform objects (mountains, hills, valleys,
etc.) are called oronyms.[1]
Recent developments
Landforms may be extracted from a digital
elevation model using some automated
techniques where the data has been
gathered by modern satellites and
stereoscopic aerial surveillance
cameras.[2] Until recently, compiling the
data found in such data sets required time
consuming and expensive techniques
involving many man-hours. The most
detailed DEMs available are measured
directly using LIDAR techniques.

See also
Geomorphology
List of landforms
Open-geomorphometry project
Terrain
Geomorphologist
Beach erosion and accretion
Beach evolution
Beach nourishment
Modern recession of beaches
Raised beach
Strand plain
Coastal management, to prevent coastal
erosion and creation of beach
Coastal and oceanic landforms
Coastal development hazards
Coastal erosion
Coastal geography
Coastal engineering
Coastal morphodynamics
Coastal and Estuarine Research
Federation (CERF)
Erosion
Bioerosion
Blowhole
Natural arch
Wave-cut platform
Longshore drift
Deposition (sediment)
Coastal sediment supply
Sand dune stabilization
Submersion

References
1. Room 1996, p. 75.
2. Robert A. MacMillan; David H.
McNabb; R. Keith Jones (September
2000). "Conference paper: "Automated
landform classification using
DEMs" " . Retrieved 2008-06-26.

Sources
Room, Adrian (1996). An Alphabetical
Guide to the Language of Name Studies .
Lanham and London: The Scarecrow
Press. ISBN 9780810831698.

Further reading
Hargitai Hetal. (2015) Classification and
Characterization of Planetary
Landforms. In: Hargitai H (ed)
Encyclopedia of Planetary Landforms.
Springer. DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-3134-
3
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/b
bm%3A978-1-4614-3134-3%2F1.pdf
Page D (2015) The Geology of Planetary
Landforms. In: Hargitai H (ed)
Encyclopedia of Planetary Landforms.
Springer.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media


related to Landforms.
Look up landform in Wiktionary, the
free dictionary.

Open-Geomorphometry Project

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title=Landform&oldid=1005447202"

Last edited 4 days ago by Hmains

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