Sheet erosion or sheet wash is the even erosion of substrate along a wide area. It occurs in a wide range of settings such as
coastal plain
A coastal plain is flat, low-lying land adjacent to a sea coast. A fall line commonly marks the border between a coastal plain and a piedmont area. Some of the largest coastal plains are in Alaska and the southeastern United States. The Gulf Co ...
s,
hillslopes,
floodplain
A floodplain or flood plain or bottomlands is an area of land adjacent to a river which stretches from the banks of its channel to the base of the enclosing valley walls, and which experiences flooding during periods of high discharge.Goudi ...
s,
beach
A beach is a landform alongside a body of water which consists of loose particles. The particles composing a beach are typically made from rock, such as sand, gravel, shingle, pebbles, etc., or biological sources, such as mollusc shell ...
es,
savanna
A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to ...
plains
and
semi-arid
A semi-arid climate, semi-desert climate, or steppe climate is a dry climate sub-type. It is located on regions that receive precipitation below potential evapotranspiration, but not as low as a desert climate. There are different kinds of semi- ...
plains. Water moving fairly uniformly with a similar thickness over a surface is called sheet flow, and is the cause of sheet erosion.
[ Sheet erosion implies that any flow of water that causes the erosion is not canalized.][ If a hillslope surface contains many irregularities, sheet erosion may give way to erosion along small channels called ]rill
In hillslope geomorphology, a rill is a shallow channel (no more than a few inches/ decimeters deep) cut into soil by the erosive action of flowing surface water. Similar but smaller incised channels are known as microrills; larger incised ch ...
s, which can then converge forming gullies
A gully is a landform created by running water, mass movement, or commonly a combination of both eroding sharply into soil or other relatively erodible material, typically on a hillside or in river floodplains or terraces. Gullies resemble la ...
.[ However, sheet erosion may occur despite some limited unevenness in the sheet flow arising from clods of earth, rock fragments, or vegetation.][
Sheet erosion occurs in two steps. First, rainsplash dislodges small particles of the substrate and then the particles are carried away, usually short distanc]