Uplift & construction
Tectonics, volcanism, deposition, reef growth, and other processes create relief or add material to the landscape.
Landforms · surface process · terrain · spatial pattern
Physical Geography
Physical geography reads Earth's surface as a spatial record of interacting climate, water, ice, rock, soil, vegetation, tectonics, and time. Landforms are not scenery: they are evidence of processes building, weathering, transporting, and depositing material.
Landscape balance
Relief emerges from construction competing with denudation.
Mountains, valleys, plains, coasts, dunes, deltas, and glacial terrain reflect both the forces that create relief and the agents that break it down and redistribute material.
Weathering
Physical and chemical processes weaken or alter rock in place, preparing material for transport.
Erosion & transport
Water, ice, wind, waves, and gravity remove and move material through the landscape.
Deposition
Transport loses capacity and sediment accumulates, building floodplains, deltas, dunes, beaches, fans, moraines, and other landforms.
Interactive geomorphology
Change process intensity and watch the landscape respond.
The lab is a conceptual terrain model. It is meant to expose competing process controls, not reproduce a specific real watershed or geologic setting.
Process Simulator
TimelineT+0 Years
The river flows fast, creating a slight curve due to uneven erosion.
Surface agents
Different agents leave different geometric signatures.
The same region can be reworked by several agents over time, so landform interpretation depends on shape, sediment, material, climate, elevation, spatial scale, and the sequence of earlier landscape changes.
01
Running water
Channels erode, transport, sort, and deposit sediment while drainage networks integrate whole landscapes.
02
Ice
Glaciers quarry, abrade, carry, and deposit enormous sediment loads while reshaping valleys and basins.
03
Wind
Deflation and abrasion move fine sediment and build dunes, loess deposits, and desert landforms where vegetation is sparse.
04
Gravity
Rockfall, landslides, creep, debris flows, and other mass movements move material downslope without requiring a transporting fluid.
Landform atlas · examples, not taxonomy
Read form together with the process that produced it.
01Fluvial
Oxbow Lake
Erosion & Deposition
A U-shaped lake that forms when a wide meander of a river is cut off, creating a free-standing body of water.
02Glacial
Fjord
Erosion
A long, deep, narrow body of water that reaches far inland. Formed when a glacier cuts a U-shaped valley and the sea fills the void.
03Fluvial
River Delta
Deposition
Wetlands that form as rivers empty their water and sediment into another body of water, such as an ocean.
04Aeolian
Mesa / Butte
Erosion
An isolated hill with steep sides and a flat top. Formed by weathering and erosion of horizontally layered rocks.
05Coastal
Atoll
Biological/Tectonic
A ring-shaped coral reef, island, or series of islets. Formed when a volcanic island sinks, leaving the reef ring behind.