Breaking rocks made easy. Blending stress control concepts to advance geomorphology

Anne Voigtländer, Michael Krautblatter

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

All landscapes are subject to stress fields, conditioned by their formation and ongoing tectonic and geomorphic changes. With this ESEX Commentary we wish to stimulate a debate on this invisible but persistent stress control on landforms, processes and materials in geomorphology. We address the legacy of active and passive stress fields, which translates into the concept of ‘tectonic predesign’, in conjunction with a perspective of geomorphic processes being driven by subcritical stresses. These concepts complement each other as ‘subcritical processes’ are controlled by tectonic predesign and in turn modulate the stress fields. This offers new theoretical and practical perspectives on how landscapes evolve, processes form materials and how rocks break easily.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)381-388
Number of pages8
JournalEarth Surface Processes and Landforms
Volume44
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 2019

Keywords

  • erosion
  • landscape evolution
  • material properties
  • theoretical geomorphology
  • weathering

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