Geomorphology articles within Nature

Featured

  • Article |

    Physical analysis of processes universal to raised peatlands produces an equation that explains their morphology and carbon storage across biomes, from Alaska to New Zealand.

    • Alexander R. Cobb
    • , René Dommain
    •  & Charles F. Harvey

  • Article |

    Observations and samples from the central Himalayas show that a giant rockslide occurring around 1190 ad in the Annapurna massif led to the collapse of an elevated palaeo-summit, illustrating the episodic mode of erosion of the glaciated high relief by mega-rockslides.

    • Jérôme Lavé
    • , Cyrielle Guérin
    •  & Valier Galy

  • Article |

    Analysis of more than 7,600 corrugation ridges on the Norwegian continental shelf shows that rapid grounding-line retreat of several hundred metres per day occurred across low-gradient ice-sheet beds during the last deglaciation.

    • Christine L. Batchelor
    • , Frazer D. W. Christie
    •  & Julian A. Dowdeswell

  • Article |

    Theoretical and experimental analysis of the effect of grain shape in bed load sediment transport is performed and a shape-corrected sediment transport law that provides greater accuracy in predictions is proposed.

    • Eric Deal
    • , Jeremy G. Venditti
    •  & J. Taylor Perron

  • Article |

    Using the new Beaumont number presented, it is concluded that the topographic evolution of collisional mountain belts is determined by the combination of plate velocity, crustal rheology and surface process efficiency.

    • Sebastian G. Wolf
    • , Ritske S. Huismans
    •  & Xiaoping Yuan

  • Letter |

    A global dataset of river longitudinal profiles shows that river profiles become straighter with increasing aridity and numerical modelling suggests that this can be explained by rainfall–runoff regimes in different climate zones.

    • Shiuan-An Chen
    • , Katerina Michaelides
    •  & Michael Bliss Singer

  • Letter |

    Even in the absence of external perturbations, waterfalls can gradually form from planar bedrock riverbeds as a result of unstable interactions between flow hydraulics, sediment transport and bedrock erosion.

    • Joel S. Scheingross
    • , Michael P. Lamb
    •  & Brian M. Fuller

  • Letter |

    Ancient shorelines on Mars must have formed before and during the emplacement of the Tharsis volcanic province, instead of afterwards as previously assumed, suggesting that oceans on Mars formed early.

    • Robert I. Citron
    • , Michael Manga
    •  & Douglas J. Hemingway

  • Letter |

    The amount of coarse gravel transported out of the Himalayan mountains by rivers is insensitive to catchment size, because the majority of gravel sourced more than 100 kilometres upstream of the mountain front is abraded into sand before it reaches the Ganga Plain.

    • Elizabeth H. Dingle
    • , Mikaël Attal
    •  & Hugh D. Sinclair

  • Letter |

    A modelling study of the bilobate nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko reveals that it has spun much faster in the past, but that its chaotically changing spin rate has so far prevented it from splitting; eventually the two lobes will separate, but they will be unable to escape each other and will ultimately merge again—a situation that seems to be common among cometary nuclei.

    • Masatoshi Hirabayashi
    • , Daniel J. Scheeres
    •  & Timothy Bowling

  • Letter |

    Climate-dependent chemical weathering is found to control the erodibility of bedrock-floored rivers across a rainfall gradient on the Kohala Peninsula, Hawai‘i; river erosion models that incorporate this process could improve the assessment of climatic controls from topographic data and the understanding of climatic feedbacks in landscape evolution models.

    • Brendan P. Murphy
    • , Joel P. L. Johnson
    •  & Leonard S. Sklar

  • Letter |

    By calculating the rotational figure of Mars and its surface topography before the Tharsis volcanic region caused true polar wander, it is shown that Tharsis formed during the Noachian and Hesperian periods at about the same time as the valley networks; early Mars climate simulations suggest icy precipitation in a latitudinal band in the southern hemisphere.

    • Sylvain Bouley
    • , David Baratoux
    •  & Francois Costard

  • Letter |

    Erosion and velocity data from 15 outlet glaciers covering temperate to polar glacier thermal regimes from Patagonia to the Antarctic Peninsula reveal that over the past century the basin-averaged erosion rates vary by three orders of magnitude as a function of climate across this latitudinal transect.

    • Michéle Koppes
    • , Bernard Hallet
    •  & Katherine Boldt

  • Letter |

    The ‘onion-like’ stratification of the two lobes of the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko reveals that its unusual shape is the result of a gentle collision merging two kilometre-sized objects in the early stages of the Solar System.

    • Matteo Massironi
    • , Emanuele Simioni
    •  & Jean-Baptiste Vincent

  • Letter |

    The relict landscapes of southeast Tibet are being formed in situ as a result of river drainage reorganization that renders rivers unable to balance tectonic uplift, so these landscapes may not provide an unaltered record of past geomorphic conditions.

    • Rong Yang
    • , Sean D. Willett
    •  & Liran Goren

  • Letter |

    Wind tunnel experiments designed to simulate the conditions on Saturn’s moon Titan yield threshold wind speeds for particle saltation higher than those predicted by models derived from simulations of terrestrial-planet conditions; the results can be reconciled by modifying the models to take into account the low ratio of particle density to fluid density on Titan.

    • Devon M. Burr
    • , Nathan T. Bridges
    •  & Joshua P. Emery

  • Letter |

    A survey along the Fraser Canyon in Canada reveals complex flow dynamics involving velocity inversions and upwelling, which suggests ways to improve flow and bedrock incision modelling.

    • Jeremy G. Venditti
    • , Colin D. Rennie
    •  & Michael Church

  • Letter |

    Topographic analyses and numerical modelling of canyon formation across the Hawaiian island of Kaua‘i show that rivers erode into bedrock more efficiently where precipitation rates are higher.

    • Ken L. Ferrier
    • , Kimberly L. Huppert
    •  & J. Taylor Perron

  • Letter |

    Previously glaciated landscapes tend to have large areas concentrated at the same elevation; here it is shown that small climate changes can trigger massive glacial expansions for these landscapes, explaining long-term patterns of erosion in the Quaternary period.

    • Vivi Kathrine Pedersen
    •  & David Lundbek Egholm

  • Letter |

    Models and field measurements together show that the branching patterns of fine-scale river networks are the result of coupled instabilities in the erosional processes that drive valley incision.

    • J. Taylor Perron
    • , Paul W. Richardson
    •  & Mathieu Lapôtre

  • News & Views |

    The East Antarctic ice sheet, the largest in the world, lies seemingly frozen in time. Discovery of a rugged landscape buried beneath the thick ice provides evidence of a more dynamic past. See Letter p.72

    • Sandra Passchier

  • Editorial |

    Earth scientists have explained why Canada and South Africa are still here.

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