In mountainous regions precipitation – be that in the form of rain, hail or snow, for example – drives erosion, which means it plays an important part in shaping the way the landscape looks. Precipitation can directly wear away at hillsides and creates streams and rivers, which leave their mark on the scenery by cutting and calving their way through it.
Take for instance the hills in the arid coastal region of Pisco Valley, in Peru (pictured above). Contrary to what you might think having first looked at the photograph, very little erosion of rock happens here. The solid rock which makes up the undulating hills is a hard-wearing grantic rock (not dissimilar to the stone you might covet for your kitchen countertops).
Over time, wind-blown sediments have blanketed the granites. Loesses, as the deposits are known, are very soft and range between 20 and 60 cm in thickness. The channels which slice the hillside are carved into the loesses, not the granites which lie below.
Rain is such a rare thing in these parts that soil barely forms (Norton et al., 2015) and it’s impossible for plants to grow on the soft substrate, leaving the slopes exposed to the elements. When the infrequent rains do come, small scale gullies, only a few centimetres deep cut their way into the sediments, taking away material loosened by torrential rainfalls at high speeds.
References
Kevin P. Norton, Peter Molnar, Fritz Schlunegger, The role of climate-driven chemical weathering on soil production, Geomorphology, Volume 204, 1 January 2014, Pages 510-517, ISSN 0169-555X, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2013.08.030.
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