Landforms are the things on Earth that give it its shape. They include long, steep mountain ranges, broad valleys, and rocky coasts. They show how the Earth changes over time and how those changes affect ecosystems, the weather, and people. Simply put, when people ask, “What are landforms?” they want to know about the basic components of geography and the forces that shape our planet.
What Are Landforms
Landforms are three-dimensional features that happen naturally on Earth’s surface and have unique shapes, heights, and slopes. Their sizes range from small hills and mounds in the area to plateaus and mountain belts that cover the whole continent.
Their shapes show how the balance between forces that build things (like volcanoes and continental rise) and forces that break things down (like weathering and erosion) works. Students who investigate what are landforms discover a classification that includes everything from high-elevation terrains to flooded ocean edges. Each has its own functions and parts in the bigger picture.
Landforms are vital to how people live, work, move, and deal with dangers because they control water flow, soil development, and the distribution of habitats. Being aware of the different types of landforms helps us understand why some places are fertile, others dry, and still others prone to flooding or earthquakes.
How Are Landforms Formed
How are landforms formed? The short answer is that geological and environmental processes combine over various timescales.
- Plate collisions, rifting, and faulting are all types of tectonic action that either move the crust to make mountains and high plateaus or pull it apart to make rift valleys and basins.
- When magma rises and cools, it forms cones, island arcs, and lava plateaus.
- Elements like rivers, ice, wind, and waves move and shape material into new forms through erosion. Weathering breaks rock into smaller pieces.
- As sediments settle, they form deltas, beaches, floodplains, and sand dunes.
- Isostatic changes, which are the crust’s reaction to loading and unloading, raise or lower areas over time, changing the relief even more.
Climate affects all of these: climates that are wetter speed up chemical weathering and river erosion; colder climates encourage glacier carving; and climates that are dry stress wind-borne abrasion and dune creation.
Types of Landforms
Geographers group landforms by their shape, origin, and height to answer the question “What are landforms?” The following list shows the main types of landforms and what makes them unique.
Mountains
Mountains are high landforms with steep sides and a lot of local relief. They usually form when plates collide (like when the Himalayas formed when India and Eurasia converge) or when volcanoes erupt (like the Andes and Cascades). They change the way it rains by making air rise and cool down (orographic effect). They feed big rivers with snow and ice melt, and different biological zones are stacked on top of each other by elevation.
Valleys
Valleys are long, flat areas between ridges of higher ground. Fluvial erosion shapes river valleys like the Rhine or Nile by cutting them into V-shaped parts. Glacial valleys, on the other hand, are wider U-shaped dips that form when ice slides across land. Valleys often have rich grounds and are essential for trade, settlement, and wildlife.
Plateaus
Plateaus are broad, high flatlands that stick out sharply above the rest of the land. Tectonic rise (Colorado Plateau) or multiple lava flows (Deccan Plateau) cause them. Even though they are in cold regions, their high elevation can make the weather cool. Plateaus often hold layered rock records along their edges and beautiful erosional features like mesas, buttes, and gorges.
Plains
Plains are significant, flat areas that were formed by rivers, the wind, or the sea depositing silt on them. The Great Plains of North America and the Indo-Gangetic Plain are two examples. Their flat terrain and rich grounds make them hubs for farming, transportation, and lots of people living together.
Hills
Hills are flat, rounded areas that are lower and not as high as mountains. They could be the remains of plateaus that have been worn away, “islands” of hard rock in layers of softer rock, or elevated blocks pushed down by weathering. The Black Hills and the Chiltern Hills show how hills can keep different types of soil, forests, and meadows in places that aren’t too big.
Deserts
Deserts are dry places that don’t get much rain, and water evaporates quickly. As aeolian processes happen, they form dunes, yardangs, and deflation hollows. Flash floods, which happen infrequently but sometimes, cut wadis and fans. From the huge Sahara to the very dry Atacama, desert landscapes show vast differences in temperature and little plant life.
Islands
An island is a piece of land that is entirely surrounded by water. Islands formed by volcanoes (Hawaii, Iceland) rise from the seabed; coral reef-forming organisms create coral islands and atolls (Maldives); and continental pieces (Madagascar) break off from bigger landmasses. Due to their isolation, islands often have species that can only be found there. However, they are also subject to weather and rising sea levels.
Canyons and Gorges
For millions of years, rivers have worn away at rock walls along canyons and gorges, making deep, narrow spaces with steep, cliff-like sides. As the Colorado River cut through the topsoil, the Grand Canyon shows layers of the ancient past. Other places, such as the Colca Valley in Peru and the Tiger Leaping Gorge in China, show how powerful water can be when it acts on tectonically elevated land.
Deltas and Coastal Landforms
Rivers lose power and dump silt at their mouths, making deltas. The Nile and Ganges–Brahmaputra deltas are two examples of deltas. The ocean’s waves, currents, tides, and changes in sea level shape the coast’s beaches, barrier islands, spits, bays, stacks, and cliffed headlands. These changing features protect against storms, support fishing, and hold major ports in place.
Landforms Around the World
Consider well-known examples that show how tectonics, temperature, and time have shaped each area to understand the variety of landforms around the world.
- Asia: Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau (collision uplift); the dry valleys of the Gobi Desert; and the rifted arcs and troughs formed by volcanoes in the East and Southeast.
- Africa: The sand seas and hamadas of the Sahara; the volcanoes and deep lakes of the East African Rift; and the fertile Nile Delta on the edge of the Mediterranean.
- Europe: Alps and Pyrenees mountains rising above flat plains; Norway’s fjord-shaped coasts formed by ice; long, broad river valleys stretching eastward.
- North America: On the Colorado Plateau, the Rocky Mountains, and the Grand Canyon cut a rift. The Great Plains and the sediment-filled Mississippi Delta are also there.
- South America: Andes and the high Altiplano; the massive lowland jungle of the Amazon Basin; coastal cliffs and river floodplains.
- Australia: The Great Dividing Range, the dry Outback with its sand dunes and inselbergs, the coral-formed beaches, and the large barrier systems.
- Antarctica: On a continent-sized ice sheet, icy plateaus, outlet glaciers, and nunataks show how glaciers have shaped the landscape on a large scale.
Why Are Landforms Important
Because terrain controls water, soils, temperature trends, and human decisions, the question of why landforms are significant affects nature, society, and knowledge.
- Resources and ecosystems: You can change habitats and output by controlling how water drains, soil forms, and nutrients move.
- The weather and climate: Mountains make orographic rain and rain shadows, beaches moderate temperatures, and elevation makes altitudinal zones.
- What people do: Plan for farming and settlement, set up transportation routes, and determine how vulnerable an area is to floods, landslides, earthquakes, and storm surges.
- Variety of life: Allow endemism on islands and remote ranges; use valleys, plateaus, and fields to connect or break up ecosystems.
- Planning and education: Give people natural “laboratories” to learn about geography and help with protection, reducing risks, and building strong communities.
FAQs
Geological processes like tectonic rise, volcanism, weathering, erosion, and deposition change landforms over very long periods of time.
Mountains are higher, steeper, and have more local relief than hills. Hills are lower, rounded, and less dramatic.
Volcanoes create stratovolcanoes, shield cones, calderas, cinder cones, lava domes, volcanic islands, and broad lava plateaus.
Landforms change over time because of things like uplift, erosion, changes in sea level, river movement, and the advance or decline of glaciers.
Landforms change over time because of factors such as uplift, erosion, changes in sea level, river movement, and the advance or decline of glaciers.
The terrain affects air flow; mountains create orographic rain and rain clouds; beaches moderate temperatures; and higher elevations create cool climates.
Those are hydrologic features, and the valleys, floodplains, basins, and shorelines that go with them are geomorphic landforms that water has made.
