What is the relief?

Can you answer the question of what is the relief?At first glance, this is no big deal, and each student would have coped with this task.Everyone knows that it was the word we used to call our surrounding area: mountains, plains, depressions, hills and cliffs.However, let us try to give a more precise and detailed definition, based on scientific terms. What is the relief?The general definition of

The word "relief" in the modern Russian language came from French.However, according to linguists, it has roots in ancient Latin, where the verb «relevo» meant "to raise", "praise", "tower".Today it is the totality of all the irregularities, but not only the land and the seas and oceans.Reliefs can vary considerably in outline, the nature of origin, size, history, development and age, but in general they can be divided into positive, which is also called convex, and negative or concave.

Macrorelief is a fairly extensive areas of land that could unfold in the tens to hundreds of kilometers.Examples are plateaus, plains, river basins and mountain ranges.

By microrelief are craters, small dunes, road embankments, small hillocks and gullies.In short, all the bumps, elevation changes which do not exceed a few meters.

In addition, scholars have identified more mesorelief and nanorelief.The first type includes troughs, ridges, hills, valleys, terraces, hills, dunes and beams, the second - plow furrow, track, located on the back roads, and mole emissions.

the main forms of relief are generally the mountains and plains.It is about them and will be discussed further.

What is the relief?Mountain nature of the relief of this kind implies a positive form of the terrain, which is peculiar to a sharp rise in the isolated object on a relatively flat surface.At the same slopes, base and top should be pronounced.

Features relief of this type most often considered in appearance was tops, and they, in turn, are domed, peaked, plateau-like and others.It should be noted that very often, it would seem, are familiar to us land areas, like islands, are actually peaks of underwater mountains.

What is the relief?Plains

under consideration category should be understood not only the areas of land, but also the bottom of lakes, seas and oceans, which are characterized by a slight slope area, an average of 5 °, and small fluctuations heights up to about 200 meters.

According to statistics, the plains on the planet occupy a large part of the area - a total of about 64%, and is considered the largest lowland belonging Amazon River, covering more than 5 million sq. Km.

Whereas altitudes, these landforms are lowland, upland, upland and plateaus.

If we talk about external processes, it may be noted that the plains are of two types: denudation and accumulative.First formed as a result of destruction of rocks, and the second - the accumulation of various types of sediments.