Physical Geomorphology

Geomorphology, in its widest sense, is that branch of the geosciences which concerns itself with the development of the surface features of the Earth. In a more restrictive sense, geomorphology is the science of those surface features whose shape is primarily determined by the action of exogenic rocesses, i.e., of processes which originate outside the solid Earth. It is with this latter concept of geomorphology that we shall concern ourselves. In contrast, the endogenic processes, i.e., the processes originating inside the solid Earth, are the subject of geodynamics, and have been treated by the writer in a separate volume (Scheidegger 1982a).