Home Guides Garden Garden Care. By Carolyn Csanyi. Related Articles. Pollution in Kentucky. Parent Rocks Parent rocks are formed over time by volcanic action, metamorphosis due to heat and pressure applied to materials within the Earth, and by sedimentation, where water action deposits materials that then harden into rock.
Weathering and Erosion Two of the main climatic factors that cause rocks to weather are moisture and temperature. Transporting Agents Once particles weather out of the parent rocks, the particles can get transported away from the area they're formed in by the action of wind, rain and bodies of water.
Soil Organic Material Once soil particles are formed, climate continues to act on soil characteristics by affecting the amount of organic material present in different soil types. Importance of the Eastern Desert in Ancient Egypt. How to Identify a Gold Bearing Area. The Different Types of Landforms. Landforms and Natural Resources of the Coastal Plain.
What Seasons Do Floods Occur? Landforms of the Piedmont. Gems Found in Wisconsin. Topography Types. Where Is Gold Located in Canada? In arid climates, water still performs much landform-building through erratic flash floods and deluges, while wind laced with silt and sand abrades rock over time. The kind of rock from which a landform is built certainly affects its character. Differences in composition mean certain rock types are more or less resistant to erosion and weathering than others.
As water and other agents strip away less resilient layers, more durable rock masses are left as outcrops, ridges or summits. Examples include monadnocks, which are isolate domes of resistant rocks, as well as mesas and buttes, which are flat-topped hills capped with a resilient layer.
Moving water, thawing ice, hard winds, gravity—all these are physical agents of erosion, weathering and deposition that act upon exposed rock and sediments to produce landforms.
Running water at a high gradient scours out canyons, gorges, gulches and ravines. A mature river meanders across the broad floodplain it has built, forming oxbow lakes and terraces.
The sharpness of ecotones between plant communities on individual landforms is related to the degree to which landforms are linked through the flow of water and sediment. Sharp ecotones occurred at the transition from depositional to erosional landforms where little material was transferred and steep environmental gradients are maintained.
Gradual ecotones occurred at the transition from erosional to depositional landforms where large quantities of material were transferred leading to the development of a gradual environmental gradient. The relationships between geomorphic processes and vegetation communities that we describe have important implications for understanding the desertification of grasslands throughout semi-arid regions of North America.
Disturbances such as grazing and climate change alter the composition of plant communities, thereby affecting the feedbacks to geomorphic processes, eventually changing drainage patterns and the spatial patterns of plant communities supported within the landscape. This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution. Rent this article via DeepDyve.
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