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The Different Types of Landforms

By David Barber; Updated October 22, 2018

Many different types of landforms make

up Earth’s topography. Several major
categories of landform de ne that smaller
portion of the planet not covered by
water, including mountains, plains,
plateaus and valleys. These can be formed
by a variety of natural forces, including
erosion from water and wind, plate
movement, folding and faulting, and
volcanic activity.

The Mountain Landform Digital Vision./Digital Vision/Getty Images

The most common type of mountains

arise where the Earth’s crust experienced
folding or faulting, such as the Canadian
Rockies and the Alps. Fault-block
mountains, such as California’s Sierra
Nevada, are formed when Earth’s crust
cracked and was pushed upward. Volcanic
mountains form when hot magma from
deep in Earth’s interior breaks through
the crust and builds up on the surface,
whether quietly or explosively. Volcanism
can form islands, such as Hawaii, built on a series of broad basaltic shield volcanoes. Volcanoes on
continents can also appear isolated and almost island-like given their prominence, a prime example being
Washington State’s Mount Rainier.

The Flats: Plains Digital Vision./Digital Vision/Getty Images

Most of the Earth's surface consists of low and high plains, de ned by a mostly level pro le that ranges
from gently rolling to completely at. Such landforms are common in areas of extensive sediment
accumulation, as in the “ oodplains” and deltas of large rivers and the Atlantic-Gulf Coastal Plain of the
United States. While those examples are low-lying, higher-elevation plains such as the Great Plains of
central North America – built by sediment washed out of the Rocky Mountains and accumulated in long-
ago seaways – also exist. Keep in mind that plains describe mostly level topography, though people
 sometimes incorrectly use “plain” as a
synonym for grassland ecosystems
(prairies and steppes). You can easily have
a forested plain.

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High Expanses: Plateaus Digital Vision./Digital Vision/Getty Images

Plateaus can be thought of as elevated

plains – that is, elevated attish areas –
bordered on at least one side by lower-
lying land and often edged by fairly
abrupt scarps. These terrain features may
derive from very old mountains eroded
down over time, while others form by
block-faulting. Earth’s largest plateau is
the Tibetan Plateau of Central and East
Asia. In arid climates, plateaus can be
heavily sculpted by water and wind
erosion into mesas, buttes and canyons with extensive bare rock, as in the Colorado Plateau of the
American Southwest.

Valleys, Canyons and Caves Digital Vision./Digital Vision/Getty Images

 The erosion of rivers and the moving ice
bodies called glaciers help sculpt valleys,
often in combination with faulting.
Glaciers owing down drainages tend to
sculpt U-shaped valleys; such glacially
carved troughs often come to support
lakes, as in the Finger Lakes of New York
State. Running water, by contrast, tends
to carve out V-shaped valleys. Mountain
valleys tend to have steep walls and
narrow channels – such features may be
called canyons or gorges – while valleys on plains tend to have shallow slopes and wider channels. Caves
form in karsts, where limestone, dolomite, or gypsum rocks are slowly dissolved by groundwater. Others
are formed by waves pounding cliffs on the coastlines, or where molten rock drains out the inside of a
lava tube of a volcano.

The Landforms of Deserts Digital Vision./Digital Vision/Getty Images

The ecological landscapes known as

deserts, de ned by very arid conditions of
low precipitation and high evaporation,
include plentiful mountains, plains,
plateaus and canyons that include
distinctive sub-varieties of desert
landforms. These include gravel plains,
sand dunes and dry lakebeds. Many
natural factors are responsible for the
creation of deserts, particularly current
and past climatic conditions. The Mojave
Desert in California consists of 1.6 million acres of landscapes that changed over millions of years,
including mountains, canyons, volcanic elds and dry lake basins. The region is within a great inland
drainage basin where ancient lakes over owed into adjacent valleys and eventually spilled into Death
Valley. After the region dried up, it left dry lakebeds exposed to erosion by the wind.

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