From the Latin verb corrodere and the noun corrosionem , the classical term corrosion means the act of gnawing away, rusting or fretting. In geological use, it has always referred to chemical erosion in some form, thus analogous to rusting in which a hard native metal, iron, is oxidized to a hydrated iron oxide which is mechanically soft and furthermore may easily be carried away in solution. Corrosion is often simply referred to as “chemical weathering” (Merrill, 1904). The use of the word corrosion in place of corrasion (mechanical abrasion) is seen in some books of 50 years ago, but is to be discouraged. To “etch” is to model or eat out by acid action; it is essentially the surface modeling involved in corrosion (as by an artist or printer in acid-etching a metal plate or fine-grained CaCO3 stone, such as the Jurassic Solenhofen Limestone).
The most common landform process involved in corrosion is that of karst (q.v.), in which limestone (CaCO3) is attacked by CO2-enriched...
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References
Bögli, A., 1951, Probleme der Karrenbildung, Geogr. Helvetica, 6(3), 191–204.
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Fairbridge, R.W. (1968). Corrosion, etching. In: Geomorphology. Encyclopedia of Earth Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-31060-6_69
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