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 reco ...
s that were uplifted and
eroded
Erosion is the action of surface processes (such as Surface runoff, water flow or wind) that removes soil, Rock (geology), rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust#Crust, Earth's crust, and then sediment transport, tra ...
.
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, me ...
*
Glacial buzzsaw The glacial buzzsaw is a hypothesis claiming erosion by warm-based glaciers is key to limit the height of mountains above certain threshold altitude. To this the hypothesis adds that great mountain massifs are leveled towards the equilibrium line a ...
*
Syrt
A syrt is a kind of an elevated landform in Russia and Central Asia.
The word means "highland", "ridge" or "backbone" in Turkic languages (''sırt'') and is present in Turkic toponymy in the mentioned areas: in Tien Shan, Pamirs, South Urals, such ...
References
{{reflist
Mountain geomorphology
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