Landform and Related Topics

Land

Solid surface of Earth that is not permanently submerged in water.

Land between bodies of water at Point Reyes National Seashore, California.

Artist's conception of Hadean Eon Earth.

Imago Mundi Babylonian map, the oldest known world map, 6th century BC Babylonia.

Solid rock landforms are easier to demarcate than marshy or swampy boundaries, where there is no clear point at which the land ends and a body of water has begun.

Landscape

Medieval Ridge and Furrow above Wood Stanway, Gloucestershire, England.

The Batad rice terraces, The Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras, the first site to be included in the UNESCO World Heritage List cultural landscape category in 1995.

Central Park, New York City, US, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted.

The Djabugay language group's mythical being, Damarri, transformed into a mountain range, is seen lying on his back above the Barron River Gorge, looking upwards to the skies, within north-east Australia's wet tropical forested landscape

The Vale of Blackmore, the main setting for Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Hambledon Hill towards Stourton Tower

The Tetons and the Snake River (1942) photograph by Ansel Adams

Salomon van Ruisdael, "View of Deventer" (1657).

Thomas Cole "The Course of Empire The Arcadian or Pastoral State", US, 1836.

Laurent Guétal, Lac de l'Eychauda, France, 1886, Museum of Grenoble.

Landscape with scene from the Odyssey, Rome, c. 60-40 BC.

:Raphael, Madonna in the Meadow (1505 - 1506).

Spring in Kiangnan (1547) by Wen Cheng-Ming(1470-1559) (lower half detail).

Claude Lorrain, Landscape with Apollo Guarding the Herds of Admetus and Mercury stealing them (1645).

Albert Bierstadt, The Matterhorn (circa 1867).

Vincent van Gogh, Wheat Fields at Auvers Under Clouded Sky (1890).

Pablo Picasso, 1908, Paysage aux deux figures (Landscape with Two Figures)

Carl Brandt: "Åreskutan, landscape",1921 (Sweden)

Emily Carr, Odds and Ends, 1939 (British Columbia, Canada)

A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.

The Aubach (Wiehl) in Germany (Watercourse)

Body of water

Any significant accumulation of water on the surface of Earth or another planet.

The Canal Grande in Venice, one of the major water-traffic corridors in the city. View from the Accademia bridge.

A tide pool in Santa Cruz, California with sea anemones and sea stars

A weir in Toledo, Spain. Weirs are frequently used to change the height of a riverlevel, prevent floodings, and measure water discharge.

A body of water does not have to be still or contained; rivers, streams, canals, and other geographical features where water moves from one place to another are also considered bodies of water.

Dune

Sand dunes of the Empty Quarter to the east of Liwa Oasis, United Arab Emirates

Sand hitting sand is more likely to stick; sand hitting a more coherent surface is more likely to bounce (saltation). This exacerbating feedback loop helps sand accumulate into dunes.

Isolated barchan dunes on the surface of Mars. Dominant wind direction would be from left to right.

Reversing dune showing short minor slipface atop the major stoss (upwind) face

Dune Nine in Sossusvlei, Namibia, is over 300m high.

Coastal dunes covered in grasses around the mouth of the Liver Å river in Denmark

Sand dunes of Hyypänmäki in Hailuoto, Finland

Gypsum dune fields, White Sands National Park, New Mexico, United States

Cross-bedding in lithified aeolian sand dunes preserved as sandstone in Zion National Park, Utah

Sand blowing off a crest in the Kelso Dunes of the Mojave Desert, California, USA

A dune in Sossusvlei, in the greater Namib-Naukluft National Park, Namibia. Note the trees being engulfed for scale.

Camelthorn trees and bushes scattered on dunes in the Kalahari Desert in Namibia (2017)

Sand dune in the Libyan Desert near Dakhla Oasis at sunset.

Wind ripples on crescent-shaped sand dunes (barchans) in southwest Afghanistan (Sistan)

Fronting the Mediterranean Sea in Oliva, Valencian Community, Spain

50 m tall dune in Salir do Porto, Portugal

White sand dunes in the Lençóis Maranhenses National Park, Maranhão, Brazil

Rub' al Khali (Arabian Empty Quarter) sand dunes imaged by Terra (EOS AM-1). Most of these dunes are seif dunes. Their origin from barchans is suggested by the stubby remnant "hooks" seen on many of the dunes. Wind would be from left to right.

Large linear seif dunes in the Great Sand Sea in southwest Egypt, seen from the International Space Station. The distance between each dune is 1.5–2.5 km.

The average-direction-longitudinal model of seif dune formation

alt=Transverse dune with wind blowing across crest|By contrast, transverse dunes form with the wind blowing perpendicular to the ridges, and have only one slipface, on the lee side. The stoss side is less steep.

alt=Animation of wind pushing transverse dunes along. The sand blows from the stoss side down onto the less side, where it is buried by the next layer. The dune thus moves, and a cross-section through it shown diagonal cross-bedding|Transverse dunes lie perpendicular to the wind, which moves them forwards, producing the cross-bedding shown here.

A dune is a landform composed of wind- or water-driven sand.

Map of Cape Cod showing shores undergoing erosion (cliffed sections) in yellow, and shores characterized by marine deposition (barriers) in blue.

Deposition (geology)

Figure 2. Map of Akaroa Harbour showing a fining of sediments with increased bathymetry toward the central axis of the harbour. Taken from Hart et al. (2009) and the University of Canterbury under the contract of Environment Canterbury.

Deposition is the geological process in which sediments, soil and rocks are added to a landform or landmass.

Hill

Clouds over hills in Steptoe, Washington

An example of a golf course in England that has hills

Cerro Paranal in Chile is a privileged place for astronomical observation,<ref>{{cite web|title=The Very Large Telescope|url=http://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/vlt.html|work=Telescopes and Instruments|publisher=ESO|access-date=10 August 2011}}</ref> and home of ESO's telescopes.

A coffee plantation on a conical hill near Orosí, Costa Rica.

An arrow pointing towards the top of the Malminkartanonhuippu hill in Helsinki, Finland.

An ant mound, or ant-hill, a mound sometimes casually referred to as a hill

Maungakiekie / One Tree Hill is a prominent feature of the skyline of Auckland, New Zealand.

A hill is a landform that extends above the surrounding terrain.

Terrain

Terrain or relief (also topographical relief) involves the vertical and horizontal dimensions of land surface.

A shaded and colored image (i.e. terrain is enhanced) of varied terrain from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission. This shows elevation model of New Zealand's Alpine Fault running about 500 km (300 mi) long. The escarpment is flanked by a vast chain of hills between the fault and the mountains of New Zealand's Southern Alps. Northeast is towards the top.

Land surface objects, or landforms, are definite physical objects (lines, points, areas) that differ from the surrounding objects.

Badlands incised into shale at the foot of the North Caineville Plateau, Utah, within the pass carved by the Fremont River and known as the Blue Gate. GK Gilbert studied the landscapes of this area in great detail, forming the observational foundation for many of his studies on geomorphology.

Geomorphology

Scientific study of the origin and evolution of topographic and bathymetric features created by physical, chemical or biological processes operating at or near the Earth's surface.

Surface of the Earth, showing higher elevations in red.

Waves and water chemistry lead to structural failure in exposed rocks

"Cono de Arita" at the dry lake Salar de Arizaro on the Atacama Plateau, in northwestern Argentina. The cone itself is a volcanic edifice, representing complex interaction of intrusive igneous rocks with the surrounding salt.

Lake "Veľké Hincovo pleso" in High Tatras, Slovakia. The lake occupies an "overdeepening" carved by flowing ice that once occupied this glacial valley.

Part of the Great Escarpment in the Drakensberg, southern Africa. This landscape, with its high altitude plateau being incised into by the steep slopes of the escarpment, was cited by Davis as a classic example of his cycle of erosion.

Gorge cut by the Indus river into bedrock, Nanga Parbat region, Pakistan. This is the deepest river canyon in the world. Nanga Parbat itself, the world's 9th highest mountain, is seen in the background.

Beaver dams, as this one in Tierra del Fuego, constitute a specific form of zoogeomorphology, a type of biogeomorphology.

Seif and barchan dunes in the Hellespontus region on the surface of Mars. Dunes are mobile landforms created by the transport of large volumes of sand by wind.

Talus cones on the north shore of Isfjorden, Svalbard, Norway. Talus cones are accumulations of coarse hillslope debris at the foot of the slopes producing the material.

The Ferguson Slide is an active landslide in the Merced River canyon on California State Highway 140, a primary access road to Yosemite National Park.

Geomorphologists seek to understand why landscapes look the way they do, to understand landform and terrain history and dynamics and to predict changes through a combination of field observations, physical experiments and numerical modeling.

Volcano

Rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface.

Cordillera de Apaneca volcanic range in El Salvador. The country is home to 170 volcanoes, 23 which are active, including two calderas, one being a supervolcano. El Salvador has earned the epithets endearment La Tierra de Soberbios Volcanes, (The Land of Magnificent Volcanoes).

Sabancaya volcano erupting, Peru in 2017

Cleveland Volcano in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska photographed from the International Space Station, May 2006

An eruption of Mount Pinatubo on June 12, 1991, three days before its climactic eruption

Fountain of lava erupting from a volcanic cone in Hawaii, 1983

Aerial view of the Barren Island, Andaman Islands, India, during an eruption in 1995. It is the only active volcano in South Asia.

Map showing the divergent plate boundaries (oceanic spreading ridges) and recent sub-aerial volcanoes (mostly at convergent boundaries)

Lakagigar fissure vent in Iceland, the source of the major world climate alteration of 1783–84, has a chain of volcanic cones along its length.

Skjaldbreiður, a shield volcano whose name means "broad shield"

Izalco volcano, the youngest volcano in El Salvador. Izalco erupted almost continuously from 1770 (when it formed) to 1958, earning it the nickname of "Lighthouse of the Pacific".

Cross-section through a stratovolcano (vertical scale is exaggerated):

Satellite images of the 15 January 2022 eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haʻapai

Pāhoehoe lava flow on Hawaii. The picture shows overflows of a main lava channel.

The Stromboli stratovolcano off the coast of Sicily has erupted continuously for thousands of years, giving rise to its nickname "Lighthouse of the Mediterranean"

Columnar-jointed basalt lava erupted from a volcano, South Penghu Marine National Park in Taiwan

Light-microscope image of tuff as seen in thin section (long dimension is several mm): The curved shapes of altered glass shards (ash fragments) are well preserved, although the glass is partly altered. The shapes were formed around bubbles of expanding, water-rich gas.

Fresco with Mount Vesuvius behind Bacchus and Agathodaemon, as seen in Pompeii's House of the Centenary

Narcondam Island, India, is classified as a dormant volcano by the Geological Survey of India

Fourpeaked volcano, Alaska, in September 2006 after being thought extinct for over 10,000 years

Mount Rinjani eruption in 1994, in Lombok, Indonesia

Capulin Volcano National Monument in New Mexico, US

Koryaksky volcano towering over Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky on Kamchatka Peninsula, Far Eastern Russia

Schematic of volcano injection of aerosols and gases

Solar radiation graph 1958–2008, showing how the radiation is reduced after major volcanic eruptions

Sulfur dioxide concentration over the Sierra Negra Volcano, Galapagos Islands, during an eruption in October 2005

Comparison of major United States supereruptions (VEI 7 and 8) with major historical volcanic eruptions in the 19th and 20th century. From left to right: Yellowstone 2.1 Ma, Yellowstone 1.3 Ma, Long Valley 6.26 Ma, Yellowstone 0.64 Ma . 19th century eruptions: Tambora 1815, Krakatoa 1883. 20th century eruptions: Novarupta 1912, St. Helens 1980, Pinatubo 1991.

The Tvashtar volcano erupts a plume 330 km (205 mi) above the surface of Jupiter's moon Io.

Olympus Mons (Latin, "Mount Olympus"), located on the planet Mars, is the tallest known mountain in the Solar System.

Vents that issue volcanic material (including lava and ash) and gases (mainly steam and magmatic gases) can develop anywhere on the landform and may give rise to smaller cones such as Puu Ōō on a flank of Kīlauea in Hawaii.

This conical hill in Salar de Arizaro, Salta, Argentina called Cono de Arita constitutes a landform.

Peninsula

A peninsula is a landform that extends from a mainland and is surrounded by water on most, but not all of its borders.