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Mass wasting, also known as mass movement, [1] is a general term for the movement of rock or soil down slopes under the force of gravity. It differs from other processes of erosion in that the debris transported by mass wasting is not entrained in a moving medium, such as water, wind, or ice.
Gully – Landform created by running water and/or mass movement eroding sharply into soil; Hill – Landform that extends above the surrounding terrain; Hillock, also known as Knoll – Small hill; Mesa – Elevated area of land with a flat top and sides, usually much wider than buttes; Mountain pass – Route through a mountain range or over ...
Its speed can range from being barely noticeable to rapid movement. The velocity of the flow is dictated by water content: the higher the water content is, the higher the velocity will be. [ 1 ] Because of the dependency on water content for the velocity of the flow, it can take minutes or years for the materials to move down the slope.
The most distinctive landforms created by gelifluction include gelifluction lobes and gelifluction benches. The former refer to tongue-shaped deposits of geliflucted material orientated downslope that tend to form on slopes of between 10° and 20°, whereas the latter refer to terrace-like deposits forming on gentler slopes with a long axis running parallel to the slope contour.
In traditional usage, the term landslide has at one time or another been used to cover almost all forms of mass movement of rocks and regolith at the Earth's surface. In 1978, geologist David Varnes noted this imprecise usage and proposed a new, much tighter scheme for the classification of mass movements and subsidence processes. [26]
A gully in Kharkiv oblast, Ukraine. Gullied landscape in Somalia.. A gully is a landform created by running water, mass movement, or commonly a combination of both eroding sharply into soil or other relatively erodible material, typically on a hillside or in river floodplains or terraces.
The two colorful ridges (at bottom left and top right) used to form a single continuous line, but have been split apart by movement along the fault. In geology , a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements.
It refers to the gravity-driven failure and subsequent movement downslope of any types of surface movement of soil, rock, or other debris. The term incorporates earth slides, rock falls, flows, and mudslides, amongst other categories of hillslope mass movements. [12] They do not have to be as fluid as a mudflow.