Understanding the Factors Influencing Relief Shapes

Factors That Determine the Shape of Relief:

• The Type of Rock: Every rock has specific characteristics.
• Climate: The type of external geological agent that dominates an area is determined by the climate.
• The Structure of Materials: Rocks that have been folded or fractured provide an initial way.
• Relief Seniority: External geological agents remove materials from one place and deposit them in others.

Clay Reliefs: However, in arid climates with little vegetation, poor but torrential rains originate a dense network of gullies and ravines called badlands. Karst Reliefs: Reliefs arising from the dissolution of limestone or other similar rocks are known as karst relief. Forms of Karst: Rainwater dissolves the surface of the limestone and forms small furrows or grooves called lenar.

• Sinkholes: Circular depressions of oval shape caused by the dissolution of limestone.
• Stalactites: Formed by the widening of a gallery in a cave.
• Stalagmites: Formed in caves below stalactites.
• Columns: Formed when stalactites and stalagmites meet.

Granitic Reliefs: These have many cracks and joints, which are usually distributed in horizontal and vertical planes.

• Arenization: Chemical weathering causes a residual gravel that lies between the bowling blocks.
• Formation: The granite blocks adhere, reducing their volume and forming rounded shapes.
• Chaos: This results in rounded blocks stacked in a more or less chaotic condition.
• Berrocal: The landscape of granite bowls with a crazy arrangement is called berrocal, where several pins are arranged one over the other in an unstable manner.
• Tor: Consisting of a sandy residual soil where some scattered bowling exist.

Climates and Geological Agents: Surface water is involved in most continental areas.

• Sea Areas: Involved in oceanic areas and the coastline, and ocean-transition zones.
• Wind: A major geological agent only in arid climates and in coastal areas.
• Glaciers: The dominant player in glacial and periglacial climates.

Gravity Processes:

• Detachment: Materials can undergo free fall or gliding movement on a sloping surface.
• Flow: Mass movement of materials that are little cohesive, moving like a viscous fluid.
• Crawling: The movement of loose materials down the slope affects only the most superficial layer of the ground.