Etch and intracutaneous landforms and their implications

Many landforms, major and minor, and including plains of various types, inselbergs, boulders, flared slopes, Rillen and rock basins, are initiated beneath the land surface, at the weathering front. They have evolved in various lithological settings. Most are formed by differential moisture attack, either controlled, or strongly influenced, by bedrock structure. Such forms of subsurface derivation may be differentiated into etch or subcutaneous features that were initiated at the base of the regolith, and intracutaneous forms that had their origin within the weathering zone. Although the agent or agents responsible for eroding the regolith and exposing the bedrock forms have varied in space and time, the similarity of etch and intracutaneous forms is such that their basic morphology persists regardless of the climatic regime in which they now occur. As the regolith is widely developed on the land surface, the forms initiated beneath and within it cannot be taken as climatic indicators. Indeed, like structural forms, these convergent forms represent a varied but significant azonal element in the physiographic landscape.

Key words:

• azonality
• convergence
• etch landforms
• groundwater weathering
• intracutaneous forms