Scales in Geomorphology
Different geomorphological processes dominate at different spatial and temporal scales. Moreover, scales on which processes occur may determine the reactivity or otherwise of landscapes to changes in driving forces such as climate or tectonics. These ideas are key to the study of geomorphology today.
To help categorize landscape scales some geomorphologists might use the following taxonomy:
- 1st - Continent, ocean basin, climatic zone (~10,000,000 km2)
- 2nd - Shield, e.g. Baltic Shield, or mountain range (~1,000,000 km2)
- 3rd - Isolated sea, Sahel (~100,000 km2)
- 4th - Massif, e.g. Massif Central or Group of related landforms, e.g., Weald (~10,000 km2)
- 5th - River valley, Cotswolds (~1,000 km2)
- 6th - Individual mountain or volcano, small valleys (~100 km2)
- 7th - Hillslopes, stream channels, estuary (~10 km2)
- 8th - gully, barchannel (~1 km2)
- 9th - Meter-sized features
Read more about this topic: Geomorphology
Famous quotes containing the word scales:
“As deaths have accumulated I have begun to think of life and death as a set of balance scales. When one is young, the scale is heavily tipped toward the living. With the first death, the first consciousness of death, the counter scale begins to fall. Death by death, the scales shift weight until what was unthinkable becomes merely a matter of gravity and the fall into death becomes an easy step.”
—Alison Hawthorne Deming (b. 1946)