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Landforms discussed in Geology 202

The photographs on this page are intended to give you a little better feel for what some common landforms look like. Unless credited to another source, the photos were taken by retired UW professor Lou Maher and can be found at his website, Geology by Lightplane. The photos on this page are just a few of the hundreds Dr. Maher has available for your perusal. You should check them out.

You should realize that the landforms shown here are not the only ones we expect you to know and recognize. We just had some nice photos lying around and thought you might like to take a look at them.

Please note that, in the interest of putting this page up quickly, all of the photos are stuck onto a single page. Consequently, this page might a little while to load if you're on a dial-up connection.

Finally, we'd love to get some feedback about what you think of the photos, the effectiveness of the presentation, or whatever it is you have a comment on.

These are gorgeous cuestas dipping toward you and to the left. The major structure here is an anticline.

Although you might want to call these cuestas, it would probably be more accurate to call them flatirons. The major structure here, again, is an anticline. Notice the beautiful dipslope in the middle of the photo.

Yup, that's a mesa: flat top, steep sides.

Here are some cuestas (in the middleground and background) curving off to the right. In the foreground is a flatiron (not a textbook example, but it's pretty nice) dipping steeply to the left.

There are a couple of very nice mesas here. The landforms with not-so-flat tops are buttes. There are several buttes here (notice several in the distance).

This photo has lots of nice mesas separated by fairly narrow valleys. The mesas here are clearly capped by a prominent white layer that's very erosion resistant.

Here are some more nice buttes.

There are beautiful dipslopes in the middleground.

And here are more spectacular cuestas.

Just can't get enough of those cuestas.

This is a nice view along the length of a glacially carved U-shaped valley. This photo was taken from the Virtual Teacher Centre.

Here's a nice U-shaped valley carved out by a glacier. This photo was taken from the Virtual Teacher Centre.

Here, in the center of the photo, is a hanging valley. Notice that its floor is perched well above the floor of the larger valley into which it flows. This photo was taken from the Virtual Teacher Centre.

Here's an arete. This photo was taken from the Illustrated Glossary of Glacial Landforms, a site designed by Karen Lemke (UW - Stevens Point) and Linda Freeman (College of the Siskiyous). This site is great because it shows you both pictures and topo maps of a wide range of glacial landforms.