Badlands and Gullying

Sedimentology and climatic environment of alluvial fans in the martian Saheki crater and a comparison with terrestrial fans in the Atacama Desert

“…Gradients close to the angle of repose of loose sediment ($32-35°) and the smoothness of the side slopes, however, suggest that the exposures may be shallowly, and possibly discontinuously, mantled by debris mass-wasted from the ridge-capping fluvial deposits plus sediment derived from the beds themselves. Such threshold slopes are common on terrestrial badlands (e.g., Howard, 2009). Despite the shallow mantling, indurated beds are often exposed in outcrop, helping to define the stratigraphic relationships.…”

Slope Systems

“…Bryan, Campbell and Yair, 1986) and the Henry Mountains (e.g. Gilbert, 1877;Howard, 2009). However, badlands are also common in Mediterranean environments (De Ploey, 1974, 1989Wainwright and Thornes, 2003;Imeson, Kwaad and Verstraten, 1982) and in other drylands in Africa (e.g.…”

“…In areas where the bedrock is thinly bedded and dipping, shallow translational slides can be significant (see the discussion in Howard, 2009), and the orientation of the dip relative to gullies can lead to distinct asymmetries in morphology, as bedrock dipping with the side slope is much more likely to fail than bedrock dipping into the side slope. That gullies may pick lines of weakness following dipping bedrock means this pattern is not uncommon.…”

“…Bryan, Campbell and Yair (1986) suggested that in the Dinosaur Provinical Park in Alberta, badland evolution has followed broad phases of incision and filling relating to relatively wetter and drier phases through the Holocene (see also Evans, Campbell and Lemmen, 2004, and similar arguments for the evolution of southern French badlands in Descroix and Gautier, 2002), although Evans (2000) has demonstrated that this landscape is also strongly controlled by inherited features from past glacial and periglacial processes. Initial formation of the South Dakota badlands seems to have been triggered by gullying as a response to base-level change (Mather, Stokes and Griffiths, 2002;Howard, 2009), and base-level change has also been implicated in Spanish gully systems (Griffiths et al, 2005), so that large-scale climate variability can also be seen to be important. However, gully formation and evolution is a complex process that may or may not indicate climatic control (Cooke and Reeves, 1976).…”

Features and evolution of slip structures in badlands areas (SE Spain)

“…Most of the studies on badlands are concerned with different questions such as the origin and characteristics of these landscapes (Alonso Sarría et al, 2011;Calvo-Cases et al, 2014;Howard, 2009;NadalRomero et al, 2007;Romero-Díaz and López Bermudez, 2009); erosion processes (Desir and Marín, 2013;Yair et al, 1980); biogeography (Gallart et al, 2013); morphology and development (Calvo-Cases and Harvey, 1996); piping processes (Faulkner, 2013;Gutiérrez et al, 1997;Romero-Díaz et al, 2007); hydrological response (Cantón et al, 2002;Latron et al, 2008;Nadal-Romero et al, 2008); modeling (Bull and Kirkby, 1997;Howard, 1997;Lukey et al, 2000;Martínez-Carreras et al, 2007); erosion rates (Ciccacci et al, 2008;Valentin et al, 2005); connectivity (Faulkner, 2008); and environmental change (Torri and Rodolfi, 2000). However, only a few studies focus on the physico-chemical characteristics of the geomorphological substrate (Benito et al, 1993;de Santis et al, 2010;Faulkner et al, 2003;Gerits et al, 1987;Imeson and Verstraeten, 1988;Kasanin-Grubin and Bryan, 2007;Pulice et al, 2012;Regüés et al, 1995;Summa and Giannossi, 2013;Summa et al, 2007), and very little consideration has been given to the microforms analyzed here (Ries, 2000), hence the interest and novelty of this paper.…”