What are Geomorphic Agents?
Geomorphic agents are natural forces that shape the Earth’s surface through processes like erosion, transportation, and deposition. They create various landforms and continuously alter the Earth’s topography.
Examples of geomorphic agents include running water, groundwater, glaciers, wind, waves, and currents. Each agent operates uniquely, influenced by factors such as climate, terrain, geology, and vegetation.
Diastrophism
Diastrophism encompasses various geological processes that involve the movement, elevation, or alteration of portions of the Earth’s crust. These processes include:
- Orogenic processes, which lead to mountain building through intense folding along elongated belts of the Earth’s crust.
- Epeirogenic processes, which result in the uplift or warping of large regions of the Earth’s crust.
- Earthquakes, which involve localized and relatively minor movements of the Earth’s crust.
- Plate tectonics, which entail horizontal movements of crustal plates.
During orogeny, the crust undergoes significant deformation, often forming folds. In contrast, epeirogeny may involve simpler deformations without the intense folding seen in orogeny. Orogeny primarily contributes to mountain building, while epeirogeny is associated with the formation or alteration of continents.
These processes, including orogeny, epeirogeny, earthquakes, and plate tectonics, can lead to faulting and fracturing of the Earth’s crust. As a result of these movements, changes in pressure, volume, and temperature occur, inducing metamorphism in rocks.
Volcanism
Volcanism includes the movement of molten rock (magma) onto or toward the earth’s surface and also formation of many intrusive and extrusive volcanic forms.
Geomorphic Processes| Class 11 Geography Notes
The geomorphic process means bringing about changes in the configuration of the Earth’s surface. It happens due to the physical stresses and chemical actions on materials present on Earth. The physical and chemical actions happen due to different endogenic and exogenic forces.
In this article, we are going to discuss Geomorphic Processes in detail.
Geomorphic Processes| Class 11 Geography Notes