300px, The highest of hills in this picture show fairly similar heights making up a summit accordance. Aerial photograph from the Altai region of Russia.
A summit accordance (sometimes also known by the German loan word gipfelflur) exists when hills and mountaintops, and eventually also
plateau
In geology and physical geography, a plateau (; ; ), also called a high plain or a tableland, is an area of a highland consisting of flat terrain that is raised sharply above the surrounding area on at least one side. Often one or more sides ha ...
x, have such a disposition that they form a
geometric plane that may be either horizontal or tilted. Summit accordances can be the vestiges of former continuous
erosion surface
In geology and geomorphology, an erosion surface is a surface of rock or regolith that was formed by erosion and not by construction (e.g. lava flows, sediment deposition) nor fault displacement. Erosional surfaces within the stratigraphic record ...
s that were uplifted and
eroded
Erosion is the action of surface processes (such as water flow or wind) that removes soil, rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust, and then transports it to another location where it is deposited. Erosion is disti ...
.
Other proposed explanations include:
[
]
*the possibility that erosion becomes more effective at height, tearing down mountains that stand out
*that
isostasy
Isostasy (Greek ''ísos'' "equal", ''stásis'' "standstill") or isostatic equilibrium is the state of gravitational equilibrium between Earth's crust (or lithosphere) and mantle such that the crust "floats" at an elevation that depends on its ...
regulates the height of individual mountain masses meaning that small mountains might be uplifted and large mountains dragged down
*that landscape dissection by uniformly spaced streams eventually reach a state in which summits attain similar heights
*that summit accordance is derivative of
structural planes exposed by erosion
See also
*
Dissected plateau
A dissected plateau is a plateau area that has been severely eroded such that the relief is sharp. Such an area may be referred to as mountainous, but dissected plateaus are distinguishable from orogenic mountain belts by the lack of folding, ...
*
Glacial buzzsaw
*
Syrt
References
{{reflist
Mountain geomorphology
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