Climatic geomorphology / Климатическая геоморфология

This book discusses new insights concerning the influence of the climate upon the earth’s relief, in particular upon the continents. It has been found that this climatic, this exogenic influence is much stronger than any endogenous influence. Endogenous forces, as any geologic map will show, are distributed randomly over the entire earth, while the exogenic influence of climate follows strict rules in its distribution from the pole to the equator, both today as in the past. Their distribution and intensity make climatic influences the best basis upon which to found a system of geomorphology, such as the one presented here.
The relief sphere of the continents, in all its many variations, is the boundary between the solid crust (the lithosphere) and the atmosphere. The internal structures of the crust are determined largely by endogenous processes, but the shape of its outer surface, the relief sphere, is actively molded down to the last minutiae by exogenous processes. These all derive in one way or another from the effects of solar energy. <...>