elongate depression of the Earth's surface. Valleys are most commonly drained by rivers and may occur in a relatively flat plain or between ranges of hills or mountains. Those valleys produced by tectonic action are called rift valleys. Very narrow, deep valleys of similar appearance are called gorges. Both of these latter types are commonly cut in flat-lying strata but may occur in other geological situations.

Wherever sufficient rainfall occurs, opportunity exists for the land surface to evolve to the familiar patterns of hills and valleys. There are, of course, hyperarid environments where fluvial activity is minimal. There also are geomorphological settings where the permeability of rocks or sediments induce so much infiltration that water is unable to concentrate on the land surface. Moreover, some landscapes may be so young that insufficient time has elapsed for modification by fluvial action. The role of fluvial action on landscape, including long-term evolutionary processes, is considered here in detail. For additional information on fluvial and hillslope processes relating to valley formation, see river.

Probably the world's deepest subaerial valley is that of the Kāli Gandaki River in Nepal. Lying between two 8,000-metre (26,000-foot) Himalayan peaks, Dhaulāgiri and Annapūrna, the valley has a total relief of six kilometres (four miles). Because the Himalayas are one of the Earth's most active areas of tectonic uplift, this valley well illustrates the principle that the most rapid downcutting occurs in areas of the most rapid uplift. The reason for this seeming paradox lies in the energetics of the processes of degradation that characterize valley formation. As will be discussed below, the steeper the gradient or slope of a stream, the greater its expenditure of power on the streambed. Thus, as uplift creates higher relief and steeper slopes, rivers achieve greater power for erosion. As a consequence, the most rapid processes of relief reduction can occur in areas of most rapid relief production.

Perhaps the most famous example of a canyon is the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River in northern Arizona. The Grand Canyon is about 1.6 km (1 mile) deep and 180 metres (590 feet) to 30 km (19 miles) wide and occurs along a 443-km- (275-mile-) long reach where the Colorado River incised into a broad upwarp of sedimentary rocks.

The relief of valleys and canyons is produced by the incising action of rivers (river). Hillslope processes are indeed critical in the development of valley sides (see below), but it is rivers that lower the level of erosion through degradation. Rivers ultimately adjust to a baselevel, defined as the lowest point at which potential energy can be transformed to the kinetic energy of river flow. In most cases, the ultimate baselevel for rivers is sea level. Some rivers drain to enclosed basins below sea level, as, for example, the Jordan River, which flows to the Dead Sea in Israel and Jordan. Moreover, rivers may adjust to local baselevels, including zones of resistance to incision, lakes, and dams (both natural and artificial).

The longitudinal profile of a valley is the gradient throughout its length. Valleys formed by river action typically have a concave upward profile, steep in the headwaters and gentle in the lower reaches. The lower end of such a profile is adjusted to an effective lower limit of erosion defined by the baselevel.

In an ideal case of river adjustment to uniformly resistant materials, the longitudinal profile of a stream assumes a characteristic form that minimizes variations in transporting power. Power in a river derives from the rate of transfer of potential energy, dE/dt, which depends on the rate of fall in elevation of water, dy/dt, according to

where E is energy, t is time, m is mass, g is the acceleration of gravity, and y is elevation. The rate of fall in elevation, in turn, can be expressed as follows:

where S is the slope (fall in elevation, dy, with downstream horizontal distance, dx) and V is the flow velocity (change in horizontal distance, dx, with time, dt).

Combining equations (1-->) and (2-->) and using the fluid density ρ (mass per unit volume of water), one obtains

where W is channel width, D is channel depth, L is a unit length of stream, and the other parameters are as defined above. Because flow discharge Q is defined as

the power per unit length of flow, Ω, can be expressed as

It should be noted that in order to minimize variation in power, a river increasing its discharge in a downstream direction must decrease its slope. Thus, slope must be constantly decreasing downstream, explaining the concave upward character of the longitudinal profile.

The idealized concave upward longitudinal profile defined purely by energy considerations, noted above, only occurs where channel bed resistances and adequate adjustment time permit. Resistant zones of bedrock require greater power for a stream to incise at a given discharge Q than do less resistant zones. Therefore, by equation (5-->) the stream gradient S must be locally steeper at resistant zones. Similarly, a rapid base-level change, such as a fall of sea level, may not allow adequate time for the entire longitudinal profile to adjust. One indication of such effects on a longitudinal profile is a nick point, or abrupt change in slope of the profile.

The cross profiles of valleys involve a combination of fluvial and hillslope processes. Although slopes and rivers are often studied separately by process geomorphologists, hills and valleys are the features that dominate landscapes. In upland areas cross profiles of valleys are often narrow and deep. Canyon morphologies are most common. Further downstream, valley floors are wider and often dominated by floodplains and terraces.

One of the few classifications of valleys is that used by the German climatic geomorphologists Herbert Louis and Julius Büdel. In areas of rapid uplift and intense fluvial action such as tropical mountains, Kerbtal (German for “notched valley”) forms occur. These are characterized by steep, knife-edge ridges and valley slopes meeting in a V-shape. Where slopes are steep but a broad valley floor occurs, Sohlenkerbtal (meaning precisely a valley with such characteristics) is the prevailing form. Valleys of this kind develop under the influence of groundwater flow in Hawaii (see below Processes (valley)). Gutter-shaped valleys with convex sides and broad floors are called Kehltal; and broad, flat valleys of planation surfaces are termed Fachmuldental.

It is important to remember that the form of valleys reflects not only modern processes but also ancient ones. The entire valley or some landforms within it may be relict, with features inherited from past geologic periods during which occurred tectonic and climatic processes of intensities quite different from those prevailing today.

Hillslopes constitute the flanks of valleys and the margins of eroding uplands. They are the major zones where rock and soil are loosened by weathering processes and then transported down gradient, often to a river channel.

The second major variety of slope is transport limited. Transport-limited slopes occur where weathering processes are efficient at producing debris but where transport processes are inefficient at removing it from the slope. Such slopes lack free faces and faceted appearances, and they are generally covered with a soil mantle. The profile of this type of slope generally has a sigmoid appearance, with convex, straight, and concave segments. The shape of the slope is an expression of the process acting upon it.

Convex slope segments commonly occur in the upper parts of soil-mantled slopes, as near the drainage divide. The noted American geomorphologist G.K. Gilbert elucidated the principles applying to convex slopes in his study of piles of mining-waste debris in California. The processes of soil creep and raindrop splash erode soil on the upper parts of slopes. Since soil eroded from the upper slope must pass each point below it, the volume of soil moved increases with distance from the divide. Since the transport rate for creep and rain splash is proportional to the slope angle, the slope angle must also increase from the divide, resulting in the slope convexity.

Straight slope segments are dominated by mass movement processes. Talus slopes are a type in which debris piles up to a characteristic angle of repose. When new debris is added to the slope, thereby locally increasing the angle, the slope adjusts by movement of the debris to reestablish the angle. Again, the result is a dynamic equilibrium in which the landform adjusts to processes acting upon it.

Concave slopes are especially common where overland-flow runoff transports sediment derived from upper slopes. Because the collection area for wash increases downslope and discharge Q is proportional to collection area, stream power—equation (5-->)—can be maintained at lower slope angles. In addition, the size of particles being transported decreases downslope because of weathering and abrasion. Because the finer particles are easier to transport, slope angles can be reduced in the downslope direction. The result is a concave shape to the slope profile.

River valleys figure prominently in the evolutionary sequence of landscape development conceived by W.M. Davis (see continental landform: Davis' erosion cycle theory and related concepts (continental landform)). Unfortunately Davis' marvelous deductive scheme of progressive landscape change with time was somewhat abused by those who employed it merely for description and classification. By the mid-20th century, the focus of geomorphological research shifted from evolutionary sequences to studies of processes. Today, new procedures for radiometric dating have rekindled interest in long-term landscape evolution.

Valley development with time can be conceived of as a functional relationship, as follows:

where v is the valley morphology, c is the climate, r is relief factors including slope, l is lithology and rock structure, p is the type of process operating (surface runoff or spring sapping), and t is time.

Valley morphology can be described in numerous ways. A useful measure is drainage density Dd, which relates the length of valleys (or streams) L to the area A in which they occur:

In many applications, A is defined as the drainage area in which a network of valleys is developed. There is a close relationship of drainage density to hillslope angles and local relief. For a given relief, higher drainage density results in short, steep valley-side slopes. For the same relief, a lower drainage density results in long, gentle slopes.

When rain falls on a land surface, part of it may infiltrate, depending on the rate of rainfall and the permeability of the substrate. The amount of rainfall that exceeds the infiltration capacity collects in pools and eventually flows over the land surface. This process of overland flow is quite inefficient because a large surface area greatly resists water movement. Depending on the substrate resistance and power of the flow, the tendency is to incise to form a channel. This transition from overland flow to channel flow is the first step toward a response to rainfall input. Eventually the dissection by channels leads to the differentiation of hills from valleys.

Not all the rainfall is transformed to overland flow and infiltration to groundwater. A portion is lost to evaporation and to transpiration by plants. What eventually flows off the landscape from surface and subsurface sources is the runoff R given by

where P is the precipitation and ET is the combination of evaporation and transpiration; S is a storage term for water held in plants, soils, and subsurface rocks. The overland flow component of runoff appears very quickly after storms, while the subsurface flow components appear much more slowly. In channels, all forms of runoff generate increased stream power because of increased discharge. This allows streams to incise, thereby deepening valleys, which may widen through hillslope processes.

Sapping is a process of hillslope or scarp recession by the undermining of an overlying resistant material in the form of weathering or water flow occurring in an underlying less-resistant material. A variation of this process, spring sapping, occurs where groundwater outflow undermines slopes and, where appropriately concentrated, contributes to the development of valleys. The action of groundwater in sapping may be concentrated at valley heads, leading to headward growth. Both enhanced weathering and direct erosion by the concentrated fluid flow lead to slope undermining and collapse at sites of groundwater outflow.

A conceptual model of valley development by sapping can be envisioned with the initial condition of a water table having a regional slope toward a hydraulic sink provided by a depressed region. Water emerging along a spring line would then foster chemical weathering and thereby increase the porosity of the seepage zone, reducing the local rock tensile strength and rendering the weathering zone more susceptible to erosional undercutting of adjacent slopes. Local zones of heterogeneity in the rock will result in some zones achieving the critical conditions necessary for such undermining before other zones achieve them. Joints, faults, and folds serve this function. These critical zones then experience enhanced undermining. Once initiated, this process becomes self-enhancing because the lines of groundwater flow converge on the spring head. The increased flow accelerates chemical weathering, which leads to further piping at the same site.

The farther a spring head retreats, the greater the flow convergence that it generates, thereby increasing the rate of headward erosion. Headward sapping proceeds faster than valley widening because the valley head is the site of greatest flow convergence. Headward growth, however, may intersect other zones that are highly susceptible to sapping. A particularly favourable zone will result in a tributary that also experiences headward growth and that may generate tributaries of its own. Thus, sapping that occurs in a zone of jointing or faulting will develop a pattern aligned with those structures. It will, however, be organized by the hydraulic controls on the groundwater flow.

This process of sapping, headward retreat, and branching eventually forms a network of valleys. The developing network works to counteract the self-enhancing effect of flow concentration mentioned above. As spring heads migrate to the neighbourhood of one another, their demands for the available groundwater compete with each other. Eventually an equilibrium is achieved at some optimum drainage density.

Excellent examples of valleys formed by sapping are found in the massive sandstone terrains of the Colorado Plateau. Groundwater seepage from the sandstone contributes to local disintegration of the bedrock at the bases of cliffs, thereby undermining slopes and leading to backwearing. Because of structural concentration of water flow along joints and faults, valleys grow headward along zones of structural weakness. Canyons formed by sapping have prominent structural control vertical to overhanging walls, flat floors, elongate shape, low drainage density (leaving undissected uplands), relatively short tributaries to main trunk valleys, irregular variation in valley width as a function of valley length, and theatre-like valley heads. Many of the sapping valleys of the Colorado Plateau are probably relict features, since lowered water tables and/or desiccating climatic conditions have in all likelihood resulted in reduced groundwater flow to the valley floors today. During wetter climatic episodes of the Quaternary (from about 2,000,000 years ago to the present), which probably coincided with periods of mountain glaciation, spring sapping activity would have been more pronounced. Under modern climatic conditions, the results of past spring-sapping processes are obscured by the modifying action of non-sapping morphogenetic processes.

The Hawaiian Islands comprise a chain of volcanic islands, with ages increasing progressively to the northwest from the island of Hawaii with its active volcanoes (volcano), Kilauea and Mauna Loa. In general, the dissection of the Hawaiian volcanoes also increases with age to the northwest, but the details of dissection are considerably influenced by climate, factors related to parent material, and changes in process. Nevertheless, a remarkable opportunity to study valley development with time is afforded by the phenomenon of the northwesterly movement of the Pacific Plate carrying a succession of volcanoes away from a stationary mantle plume (rising jet of partially molten rock material) located at the southern tip of Hawaii.

Rainfall is heaviest on the northeastern slopes of the volcanoes because of the prevailing trade winds. Although this results in generally higher drainage densities on the windward rather than leeward slopes of islands such as Hawaii, there are important exceptions. Mauna Loa, for example, lacks dissection on its northeastern flanks in spite of having the same amount of rainfall as highly dissected parts of Mauna Kea. Such is the case because the basaltic lava flows of the volcanoes are so permeable that drainage will not develop until a less permeable ash mantle is emplaced or until weathering reduces infiltration. Examples of both phenomena occur in Hawaii. Kilauea Volcano, the youngest of the Hawaiian shields, displays essentially no dissection except where ash from the 1790 Keanakakoi eruption was emplaced. The older Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea shields display V-shaped ravines only where their flanks were mantled by Pahala ash. Dissection is more pronounced on Mauna Kea, which is older than Mauna Loa. Kohala (Kohala Mountains) Volcano is the oldest shield on the island of Hawaii, having formed about 700,000 years ago. Deep weathering of its basalt has reduced infiltration sufficiently to promote high-density drainage on its northeastern slopes.

Valley initiation on the Hawaiian volcanoes thus depends on rainfall and infiltration capacity. When runoff valleys are initiated, their streams incise to form V-shaped ravines. The ravine systems eventually become sufficiently deep to expose deeper layers where groundwater activity and spring sapping become more important. The deepest incision produces U-shaped, theatre-headed valleys. Because the layered basalt flows are most permeable parallel to dip, there is efficient groundwater movement toward the sea. The regional water table on the islands is near sea level, with a slight bulge in the central parts of the islands that have a gentle seaward slope in all directions.

The U-shaped sapping valleys of the older Hawaiian volcanoes display enhanced weathering at the water table. This undermines the side slopes of the valleys, so that their steep-sided walls meet their floors at a sharp angle. The valleys widened laterally as they were developed by headward growth of springs at the valley heads. Perennial flow was maintained by large springs.

The role of structure in drainage development may be passive, in which case the composition of rocks and various rock discontinuities (joints, faults, and bedding) dictate the details of erosion. In this way, structure provides the boundary conditions for landscape degradation. During tectonism, such as faulting and folding, structural controls change with time, and the erosional system must adjust to changing resistances. Different structural controls also are encountered as incision of streams exposes lower units in the Earth's crust.

Over the years, Russian and eastern European investigators have emphasized structural control in geomorphic analysis. I.P. Gerasimov defined structural units of the landscape called morphostructures as terrain types generated by a combination of tectonic activity and climate. Various morphostructures are produced by alternating periods of uplift (with resulting dissection) and stabilization (yielding planation surfaces). The history of a morphostructure and regional tectonism can be studied by analyses of river terraces, planation surfaces, and correlative sedimentary deposits.

In a series of tilted sediments the differential erosion of softer units, such as clay and shale, results in valleys developed perpendicular to the dip or tilt of the units. These strike valleys are paralleled by ridges of the tilted sediments called cuestas (cuesta). Another term for a strike stream, which parallels the structural grain, is a longitudinal stream. In contrast, transverse streams cut across structural trends. Streams flowing down the tilted sediments of the cuesta are called dip streams because they parallel the structural dip of the strata. Streams draining the cuesta scarp into longitudinal valleys flowing opposite to the structural dip are called antidip streams.

One of the most interesting anomalies that occurs in drainage evolution is the development of stream courses across the axes of structural zones (e.g., upwarps and fold belts). Some examples of cross-axial, or discordant, drainage include rivers that appear to take the most difficult routes possible through folded regions such as the Appalachian Mountains of the United States and the Zagros Mountains of Iran. The classical studies of cross-axial drainage were made during the exploration of the Colorado River system in the 19th century by the American geologist John Wesley Powell (Powell, John Wesley). The Colorado River and its tributaries cross great structural upwarps. Rather than flowing around domes or plunging folds, the rivers carved canyons into what appears to be paths of greatest resistance. One theory posed by Powell for such relationships is that of antecedence. According to this view, the rivers were already in their present positions when the various anticlinal folds and upwarps began to grow. A relevant analogy is a saw into which a log is being pushed. The saw represents the river and its continuing degradation, and the log represents the growing upwarp.

Another possible origin of cross-axial drainage is superimposition. According to this theory, a cover of sedimentary material must bury older structures. The river develops on this overlying sedimentary cover and subsequently imposes its pattern across the underlying structures as they are exposed by continuing degradation.

A third explanation for cross-axial drainage is that of inheritance. In this hypothesis, an erosion surface is developed across the structure zone by long-continued planation. When the streams incise, abandoning the former planation surface, they become imposed across the structures. Alternatively, the stream may actually exploit zones of weakness or minimal resistance as it downcuts from former levels. Stream capture (also called stream piracy) occurs as more aggressively eroding portions of the drainage cut through divides. In many cases, a complex combination of the above processes probably occurs to yield the final result.

Stream capture is especially common where longitudinal streams flowing on the weaker rocks of a fold belt erode into the valleys of transverse streams that must cross the resistant strata. Sections of valley abandoned after such captures are known as wind gaps. These contrast with the water gaps that still contain transverse streams. The famous water gaps of the Appalachians are excellent examples of such patterns.

The importance of climate in landscape evolution, particularly valley development, has been emphasized by many European geomorphologists. Jean Tricart and André Cailleux of France and Julius Büdel of Germany developed climatic geomorphology as a synthesis of relief-forming processes. Climatic geomorphologists define systematic morphoclimatic zones on the globe in which relief-forming mechanisms differ as a function of climate. Some of the important morphoclimatic zones are briefly outlined in the following sections.

The term periglacial relates to cold-climate processes and landforms (see glacial landform: Periglacial landforms (glacial landform)). The most important periglacial influence on valleys is frost action, which produces abundant debris by freeze-thaw action on rock and soil. During the coldest periods of the Quaternary (about the last 2 million years), the periglacial zone was enlarged to approximately twice its present extent. Hillslopes became mantled with frost-shattered rubble that moved downslope during cycles of freezing and thawing. The relicts of this periglacial activity characterize much of the modern humid-temperate zone—e.g., in portions of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in the United States and England and Poland.

In arid regions moisture conditions are inadequate to support abundant vegetative cover of the land surface. As a result, the land is subjected to intense fluvial, eolian, and mass-wasting processes. The importance of fluvial action may seem ironic for an arid region. Although most arid regions receive little rainfall, the amount that falls is especially effective. Rare but intense arid-region rainstorms act upon a landscape that is unprotected by vegetation. Of course, some hyperarid regions receive such infrequent rainfall that fluvial processes are indeed ineffective. Nevertheless, even the most arid places on Earth show evidence of fluvial activity, either because of wetter conditions in the past or because of very rare rainstorms.

Tropical regions are dominated by dense vegetative cover and deep weathering profiles. In continuously humid tropical zones, fluvial activity is facilitated by intense rainfall but inhibited by the protective effect of rainforests. The lateritic soils of these regions, however, do not promote deep root penetration, and the vegetative cover may be undermined by fluvial erosion or mass movement. Fluvial activity may be quite intense in the tropics, especially in tectonically active areas. In more stable cratons, however, the landscape is dominated by low-relief planation surfaces. Rivers flowing on the deeply weathered regolith of these surfaces have low stream power and transport mainly fine-grained weathering products. Thus, immense contrasts in fluvial activity exist in the tropics.

At higher tropical latitudes, the continuously humid zone of the Equator changes to a zone of seasonal rainfall. Such regions have savanna vegetation because of prolonged dry seasons. Erosion rates may be extremely high in savanna environments.

Because the Earth's climate has changed profoundly during the Quaternary and Tertiary (roughly the past 65,000,000 years), many landscapes are palimpsests—i.e., they are composed of relict elements produced under the influence of past climates and modern elements produced in the present climatic regime. The study of such landscape changes is sometimes called climato-genetic geomorphology. Some researchers in the field, notably Büdel, have maintained that little of the extant relief in humid temperate regions of the Earth results from modern relief-forming processes. Rather, they believe, much of the familiar humid temperate landscape is inherited from past climatic conditions, including periglacial, arid, and tropical.

Büdel focused attention on differences in the nature of valley formation as a function of climate through the history of a landscape. He argued that very rapid valley formation accompanied periods of periglacial activity in central Europe. Modern rivers in the region seem less effective at valley incision. Most of them flow on fills within great bedrock valleys, indicating that aggradation rather than downcutting is occurring today. Prior to the Quaternary phase of valley cutting, central Europe in the Tertiary seems to have experienced a prolonged period of planation, resulting in low-relief plains. Büdel proposed that the remnants of these Tertiary plains, now preserved as broad planar uplands, are inherited from a time of tropical planation. Remnants of a former tropical regolith on the uplands provide some evidence for this hypothesis.

The southwestern desert of Egypt is one of the most arid places on Earth. The region lacks surficial traces of active fluvial processes and is dominated by eolian activity. In this region, a research team headed by John F. McCauley of the U.S. Geological Survey discovered in 1982 that the local drift sand had buried an array of valleys and other relict fluvial features. The discovery was made possible by the imaging radar system of the U.S. Space Shuttle, which penetrated several metres of the extremely dry sand to reveal the previously unknown valleys. The relict valleys were probably part of Late-Tertiary river systems that drained the eastern Sahara during relatively wet climatic conditions prior to the onset of hyperaridity in the Quaternary.

A very important American paleovalley involves the complex history of the Ohio River. Prior to the glacial phases of the Quaternary, the preglacial predecessor of the Ohio drained northwestward from the Appalachians across the Midwest, but far north of its present course. Numerous water wells in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois are located along this paleovalley, which is called the Teays River System. The advances of Quaternary ice over the course of the Teays River eventually caused the drainage to shift from the Teays route to one roughly paralleling the glacial boundary. The modern Ohio River is the product of this heritage.

The English-born geomorphologist George H. Dury developed a theory for the widespread phenomenon of stream underfitness. He believed that, when the larger valley forms developed, climatic change was required to reduce the channel-forming discharges from past highs to the modern shrunken channel dimensions. Dury argued that the last phase of stream shrinkage occurred at the end of the last glaciation when the global climate changed from cool and moist to warm and dry. He quantified his theory, utilizing the relationship between the wavelength of modern meandering rivers (λ) and their bank-full discharge (q_b),

where the units of λ and q_b are metres and cubic metres per second, respectively.

Using equation (9-->), Dury found that since valley meanders were 5 to 10 times larger than modern river meanders, the ancient bank-full discharges must have been 25 to 100 times larger than the modern values. Such large modifications implied a phenomenal climatic change that was not accepted by the general scientific community. Numerous other factors besides climatic change play a role in the development of underfitness. These include changes in the type and amount of sediment transported by streams, the role of different rock types in shaping valley dimensions, and the role of large, rare floods (as opposed to bank-full discharge) in defining channel dimensions. The problem of underfitness remains a challenge awaiting complete geomorphological explanation.

Probably the most remarkable example of a misfitness is the channeling of the basaltic plain of eastern Washington in the northwestern United States by cataclysmic glacial floods. The great floods emanated from glacial Lake Missoula, which was impounded between about 17,000 and 12,000 years ago by a lobe of the Cordilleran ice sheet that extended into northern Idaho. Failure of this ice dam released a lake volume of about 2,500 cubic kilometres at discharges of up to 2 × 10⁷ cubic metres per second. These immense flows completely overwhelmed the preglacial stream valleys of the Columbia Plain in eastern Washington. As the floods eroded loess and bedrock from former valley divides, a great plexus of scoured channel ways known collectively as the Channeled Scabland was formed. Because preglacial valleys were filled to overspilling, this process is really an example of stream overfitness. Numerous diagnostic landforms, including great cataracts, characterize the Channeled Scabland.

The above relationships were first described in the 1920s by the American geologist J Harlen Bretz, who contended that the Channeled Scabland could only be explained by the action of cataclysmic flooding. He encountered vehement opposition to this hypothesis but was eventually able to convince most of his critics of its validity by carefully documenting the overwhelming evidence for flood-produced landforms. Of considerable importance was the discovery of giant current ripples composed predominantly of gravel. More than five metres (16 feet) high and spaced 100 metres (328 feet) apart, these current ripples occurred on large bars of gravel and boulders.