Plain

Mount Ararat in the Caucasus, with the Ararat plain in foreground.

In geography, a plain is a flat, sweeping landmass that generally does not change much in elevation. Plains occur as lowlands along the bottoms of valleys or on the doorsteps of mountains, as coastal plains, and as plateaus or uplands.[1]

In a valley, a plain is enclosed on two sides but in other cases a plain may be delineated by a complete or partial ring of hills, by mountains or cliffs. Where a geological region contains more than one plain, they may be connected by a pass (sometimes termed a gap). Coastal plains would mostly rise from sea level until they run into elevated features such as mountains or plateaus.[2]

Plains are one of the major landforms on earth, where they are present on all continents, and would cover more than one-third of the world’s land area.[3] Plains may have been formed from flowing lava, deposited by water, ice, wind, or formed by erosion by these agents from hills and mountains. Plains would generally be under the grassland (temperate or subtropical), steppe (semi-arid), savannah (tropical) or tundra (polar) biomes. In a few instances, deserts and rainforests can also be plains.[4]

Plains in many areas are important for agriculture because where the soils were deposited as sediments they may be deep and fertile, and the flatness facilitates mechanization of crop production; or because they support grasslands which provide good grazing for livestock.[5]

Types of plain

A small, incised alluvial plain from Red Rock Canyon State Park (California).
A flood plain in the Isle of Wight.

Depositional plains

Notable examples

Nineveh Plains (Bozan, Iraq)
View of Fields at Biccavolu, Eastern coastal plains, Andhra Pradesh, India
Yilan Plain, Taiwan
View of the South Småland peneplain at Store Mosse National Park in Sweden.
North Somerset Levels taken from Dolebury Warren, England, UK
Terrain near the central German town of Fulda.
The Wallachian Plain, in the southern part of Argeş County.
View of Messara from the hill of Phaestus, Greece
Cumberland Plain bushland in Western Sydney, Australia.
The Kakanui Range dominates the eastern horizon of the Maniototo Plain
Curry County, eastern New Mexico, on the North American Great Plains
Los llanos, an area of land with relatively high relief in Venezuela

Asia

Western Asia

South Asia

Eastern Asia

Europe

Northern Europe

Central Europe

Eastern Europe

Southern Europe

Oceania

Australia

New Zealand

Americas

North America

Central and South America

See also

Look up plain in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Plains.

References

  1. ↑ Rood, Stewart B.; Pan, Jason; Gill, Karen M.; Franks, Carmen G.; Samuelson, Glenda M.; Shepherd, Anita (2008-02-01). "Declining summer flows of Rocky Mountain rivers: Changing seasonal hydrology and probable impacts on floodplain forests". Journal of Hydrology. 349 (3–4): 397–410. doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2007.11.012.
  2. ↑ Whittow, John (1984). Dictionary of Physical Geography. London: Penguin, 1984, p. 467. ISBN 0-14-051094-X.
  3. ↑ Geoff C. Brown; C. J. Hawkesworth; R. C. L. Wilson (1992). Understanding the Earth (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 93. ISBN 0-521-42740-1.
  4. ↑ Gornitz, Vivien (ed.). 2009. Encyclopedia of Paleoclimatology And Ancient Environments. Springer: Dordrecht, p. 665.
  5. ↑ Powell, W. Gabe. 2009. Identifying Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) Using National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) Data as a Hydrologic Model Input for Local Flood Plain Management. Applied Research Project, Texas State University.
  6. ↑ "Pediplain". Encyclopedia Britannica.
  7. ↑ Migoń, Piotr (2004). "Planation surface". In Goudie, A.S. Encyclopedia of Geomorphology. pp. 788–792.
  8. ↑ Jones, David K.C. (2004). "Denudation chronology". In Goudie, A.S. Encyclopedia of Geomorphology. pp. 244–248.
  9. ↑ "Glossary of Landform and Geologic Terms" (PDF). National Soil Survey Handbook—Part 629. National Cooperative Soil Survey. April 2013. Retrieved 17 August 2016.
  10. ↑ United States. Department of Conservation. Division of Geology. Glacial Sluceways and Lacustrine Plains of Southern Indiana. By William D. Thornburry. Bloomington: n.p., 1950. Web. <https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/205/B04.pdf?sequence=1>.
  11. ↑ "Lava Plateaus". Retrieved 2014-01-26.
  12. ↑ Magilligan F.J., Gomez B., Mertes L.A.K., Smith, L.C. Smith N.D., Finnegan D., Garvin J.B., Geomorphic effectiveness, sandur development, and the pattern of landscape response during jökulhlaups: Skeiðarársandur, southeastern Iceland, Geomorphology 44 (2002) 95–113
  13. ↑ Smith L.C., Sheng Y., Magilligan F.J., Smith N.D., Gomez B., Mertes L., Krabill W.B., Garven J.B., Geomorphic impact and rapid subsequent recovery from the 1996 Skeiðarársandur jökulhlaup, Iceland, measured with multi-year airborne lidar. Geomorphology vol. 75 Is. 1-2 (2006) 65-75
  14. ↑ N.G. Vinogradova (1997). "Zoogeography of the Abyssal and Hadal Zones". Advances in Marine Biology. Advances in Marine Biology. 32: 325–387. ISBN 9780120261321. doi:10.1016/S0065-2881(08)60019-X.
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