Collaborative Landforms Gallery

This gallery is being built collaboratively, images from Britain and Ireland have been provided to illustrate various landforms extracted from a list of Wikipedia Articles with category Landforms.

As this list was part automatically generated, and part human generated, there is some editing work needed to clarify a few points.

Note that clicking on an image thumbnail displays the Geograph page with a larger photo, description, date taken and a map extract (Ordnance Survey, or Google for Ireland). Clicking on an Ordnance Survey map opens the map in a new window and you can zoom or move; for Google maps you can do this directly on the Geograph photo page. Clicking the grid square reference before the title on the photo page then clicking "more links" gives access to a number of mapping sites including satellite images. For example:
, click NC3045, click More links for NC3045.

The topics are those given the category landforms in Wikipedia. Those listed here have examples or near equivalents in Britain and Ireland. Some of the topics are more a habitat than a landform, and many of those are included in the United Kingdom Biodiversity Action Plan.

Alvar

An alvar is a biological environment based on a limestone plain with thin or no soil and, as a result, sparse grassland vegetation. Often flooded in the spring, and droughted in mid summer, alvars support a distinctive group of prairie-like plants. Most alvars occur either in northern Europe or around the Great Lakes in North America. This stressed habitat supports a community of rare plants and animals, including species more commonly found on prairie grasslands. Lichen and mosses are common species. Trees and bushes are absent or severely stunted.
In the United Kingdom the word "Alvar" is rarely used. The exposed landform is called a limestone pavement and thinly covered limestone is known as calcareous grassland. They are included in the United Kingdom Biodiversity Action Plan
Wikipedia page

Limestone pavement etc.

Limestone pavement in Yorkshire
Limestone pavement in Galway:
Limestone scars west of Kendal:

The map links below show further examples:
Map - limestone pavements in Britain
Map - limestone pavements in Ireland

Calcareous grassland

Examples in Southern England

Arm (geography)

In geography, an arm is a narrow extension, inlet, or smaller reach, of water from a much larger body of water, like an ocean, sea, or lake. Although different geographically, a sound or bay may be called an arm.
Wikipedia page

Arm of the sea
Arms from an estuary
Arm from a creek
Slough Arm - branch of the Grand Union Canal

Bench (geology)

In geomorphology, geography and geology, a bench or benchland is a long, relatively narrow strip of relatively level or gently inclined land that is bounded by distinctly steeper slopes above and below it. Benches can be of different origins and created by very different geomorphic processes.

Wikipedia page

Differential erosion of rocks of varying hardness - "structural benches."
- see Ingleborough geology in Wikipedia

Fluvial terrace, river cuts into a floodplain.


Wave-cut platform on coast.

Maps - examples all round the coast of Britain and Ireland

Shelf on side of an open-pit mine or quarry.

Bocage

Bocage is a Norman word which has entered both the French and English languages. It may refer to a small forest, a decorative element of leaves, a terrain of mixed woodland and pasture, or a type of rubble-work, comparable with the English use of 'rustic' in relation to garden ornamentation. In English bocage refers to a terrain of mixed woodland and pasture, with fields and winding country lanes sunken between narrow low ridges and banks surmounted by tall thick hedgerows that break the wind but also limit visibility. The term is normally applied to this type of landscape in Northern France. Similar landscapes are found in England in Devon. We also have examples from other counties of England and Wales.
Wikipedia page

Bog

A bog is a wetland habitat that accumulates peat, a deposit of dead plant material - often mosses, and in a majority of cases, Sphagnum moss. It is one of the four main types of wetlands. Other names for bogs include mire, quagmire and muskeg. Frequently they are covered in Ericaceous shrubs rooted in the Sphagnum moss and peat. The gradual accumulation of decayed plant material in a bog functions as a carbon sink.
Wikipedia page

Bog in Burnham Beeches
Sphagnum Moss
Upland bogs
Raised bogs in shallow river valleys

Dersingham Bog near Sandringham, Norfolk:

A man-made bog near King's Lynn
Some bogs in Scotland:

Burn (landform)

In Scotland, North East England and some parts of Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, burn is a name for watercourses from large streams to small rivers. The term is also used in lands settled by the Scots and in other countries, notably in Otago, New Zealand, where much of the naming was done by Northumbrian-born surveyor and son of a Scot John Turnbull Thomson.
Wikipedia page

Mainland Scotland:

Orkneys
Shetlands
England - North Pennines

Carr

A carr, the name of which is derived from the Old Norse kjarr, meaning a swamp, is a type of waterlogged, wooded terrain that, typically, represents a succession stage between the original reedy swamp and the eventual formation of forest in a sub-maritime climate. A landform which is a specific habitat.
Wikipedia page

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