Abstract

Granite Landforms provides a systematic, coherent, and comprehensive account and analysis of granite landforms. It examines granite forms and their genesis; the morphology of granite exposures; the nature of the materials from which granitic rocks have evolved; and the weathering processes near the Earth’s surface. It also describes major landforms and assemblages, as well as the minor features that have evolved on the major hosts.
Organized into four parts encompassing 12 chapters, this book begins with an overview of granite, including their characteristics, occurrences, and composition. It then discusses the factors that influence the weathering of granitic rocks and considers boulders and inselbergs, the all-slopes topography in granite, granite plains and rock basins, granite forms associated with steep slopes, and scarp foot depressions. The reader is also introduced to the piedmont angle, grooves or flutings, caves and tafoni, split rocks, cracked blocks and plates, and the role of climate in the development of landforms on granitic outcrops.
Geologists, geomorphologists, geology students, and anyone interested in geology will find this book extremely useful.
Pictorially this book is a bonanza with some three hundred black and white photographs and diagrams. An extensive reference list is provided together with a useful index. Geologists and geomorphologists are equally ready to admire a granite landform, but to be able to explain its form and presence is to add another component to their pleasure. This book will help with both aspects.
Australian Mineral Foundation