Weathering erosion deposition (WED) is a continuous cycle that occurs across landscapes. Weathering breaks down rocks and minerals, while erosion moves them across.
Water erosion forms canyons like the Grand Canyon by cutting and polishing rocks into erosional channels and depositing sediments as alluvial fans and deltas.
Water
Water’s flowing movement erodes away tiny bits of Earth in a process called erosion, while also causing rocks and minerals to separate or combine together in different shapes or even clump together altogether.
Water can help erode rocks and minerals through physical weathering; this process occurs as they run over them, scrape against each other and rub against objects like pebbles and boulders. This is known as physical weathering.
Chemical weathering occurs as water changes the composition of rocks and minerals, such as dissolving limestone in rainwater. Carbonic acid in rain can also dissolve rock such as marble that often forms cliffs and caves.
Unless there is vegetation to hold soil in place, rivers with fast-moving waters can quickly erode it through sheet erosion. With time, this form of erosion can develop into rill and then gully erosion; ultimately transporting billions of tons of sediment each year to oceans while also altering coastlines and valleys across many nations.
Wind
Wind can help soft rocks weather over time, while it cannot erode them on its own. Erosion refers to the process of loosening, transporting and depositing soil particles through processes such as wind, running water, glaciers, waves or gravity – not forgetting chemical processes such as acid in rain.
Erosion alters Earth’s landscape by dislodging and transporting particles, particularly in dry regions. Wind erosion has the power to shape landscape features like desert sand dunes or loess deposits on farmland into new landforms like dunes or loess deposits; factors influencing wind erosion include soil cloddiness, surface roughness, field size, moisture content and vegetation cover as a means to understand natural forces at work in shaping geological features. Water erosion plays another crucial role in molding our environment by slowly shaping rocks into ever-evolved works of art that change with time and weathering processes affecting our planet as an environment is constantly shaping geological features sculpting our surroundings like never before.
Ice
As water seeps into cracks in rocks and freezes, it weakens them over time. Repetitive freezing and thawing cycles weaken further until eventually rocks will crack apart due to physical weathering – this process is known as physical weathering.
Erosion refers to the gradual process by which materials are transported away from their original locations by gravity, wind, ice or wave action and deposited somewhere else, such as on beaches or far away such as ocean floors.
Glaciers (glaciers) can create breathtaking landscapes. However, their impact on geological timescales remains controversial due to an inadequate proxy for erosion rate on continental shields. Here, we combine geophysical data and an erosion law to reconstruct patterns of glacial erosion across the Eurasian Ice Sheet (EIS). On multi-millennial timescales, EIS erosion generally corresponds with expectations derived from climate a priori; however, short-lived episodes of high ice flux cause significant deviation from this pattern. We attribute these variations both to environmental controls (lithology, topographic relief and thermomechanical reorganization of EIS) as well as internal ice dynamics-related switches.
Gravity
Gravity shapes Earth’s surface by shifting rocks and soil from higher locations to lower ones, producing what are known as mass movements – including landslides, avalanches, earthflows or sudden dramatic events like landslides or sudden steady movements occurring over a prolonged period. These events can either occur suddenly and dramatically or slowly over time.
Living things, such as plants and microorganisms, can contribute to weathering. Plant roots may wedge their way into cracks in rocks to gradually widen them before finally breaking off and being carried off by water or wind.
Gravity-driven erosion occurs on steep slopes during heavy rainfall, often in the form of avalanches, slides and earthflows. There have been various methods developed to monitor this process but they can be costly and labor intensive. A photogrammetric method developed for this study can quickly gather terrain data while simultaneously quantifying each gravity erosion event with high precision; making this approach suitable for real-time dynamic monitoring on gully slopes.