ABSTRACT
This chapter explains how geological processes and geological structures stamp their mark on landforms of all sizes. It shows how plate tectonic processes dictate the gross landforms of the Earth – continents, oceans, mountain ranges, large plateaux, and so on – and many smaller landforms; how diastrophic forces fold, fault, lift up, and cast down rocks; how orogeny builds mountains; how epeirogeny upheaves or depresses large areas of continental cores without causing much folding or faulting. It also notes that the boundaries of tectonic plates are crucial to understanding many large-scale landforms, with divergent boundaries, convergent boundaries, and transform boundaries bearing characteristic topographic features. This chapter also demonstrates how incipient divergent boundaries may produce rift valleys, and how mature divergent boundaries on continents are associated with passive margins and great escarpments; and how convergent boundaries produce volcanic arcs, oceanic trenches, and mountain belts (orogens), while transform boundaries produce fracture zones with accompanying strike-slip faults and other features. Finally, it considers how plate tectonic processes exert an important influence upon such continental-scale landforms as mountain belts, and the important interplay between uplift, climate, and denudation.
