Landform

Cono de Arita, Salta Province of Argentina

A landform in the earth sciences comprises a geomorphological unit, and is largely defined by its surface form and location in the landscape, as part of the terrain, and as such, is typically an element of topography. Landform elements also include seascape and oceanic waterbody interface features such as bays, peninsulas, seas and so forth, including sub-aqueous terrain features such as mid-ocean ridges, volcanoes, and the great ocean basins.

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 and numerous other structural and size-scaled (i.e. ponds vs. lakes, hills vs. mountains) elements including various kinds of inland and oceanic waterbodies and sub-surface features.

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

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, 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. Until recently, compiling the data found in such data sets required time consuming and expensive techniques of many man-hours.

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 homogenous 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, grasslands, and impact craters.

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.

See also

• List of landforms
• Terrain
• Geomorphology