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Badlands

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Geomorphology of Desert Environments

Abstract

Badlands have fascinated geomorphologists for the same reasons that they inhibit agricultural use: lack of vegetation, steep slopes, high drainage density, shallow to non-existent regolith, and rapid erosion rates. Badlands appear to offer in a miniature spatial scale and a shortened temporal scale many of the processes and landforms exhibited by more normal fluvial landscapes, including a variety of slope forms, bedrock or alluvium-floored rills and washes, and flat alluvial expanses similar to large-scale pediments. The often (but not universally) rapid land-form evolution provides the prospect of direct observational coupling of process and landform evolution in both natural and man-induced badlands. However, Campbell (1989) and Campbell and Honsaker (1982) caution about problems of scaling between processes on badland slopes and channels to larger landforms.

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  1. Alan D. Howard
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, State University of New York at Buffalo, 14261, Buffalo, NY, USA

    Athol D. Abrahams

  2. Department of Geography, University of Keele, ST5 5BG, Keele, Staffordshire, UK

    Anthony J. Parsons

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© 1994 Athol D. Abrahams and Anthony J. Parsons

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Howard, A.D. (1994). Badlands. In: Abrahams, A.D., Parsons, A.J. (eds) Geomorphology of Desert Environments. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8254-4_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8254-4_9

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