Types of Landforms - Learn about many different natural features of the earth

Types of landforms. Do you know what an alluvial fan is? Or maybe you know what a fossil is. Or just maybe you have heard of a plateau. Well in this video we are going to learn what they are and much more. So stay tuned. Have you ever gone hiking in a canyon? Or maybe you've skied down a snowy mountain? You may live in a valley without a hill for miles. Earth has all kinds of features like these called landforms. So what is a landform? A landform is a specific feature on the surface of the earth ranging from huge things like plains, plateaus, and mountains to smaller stuff like hills and valleys. There may be other types of landforms that you've never seen. For instance, have you heard of an alluvial fan? This is a fan-shaped mass of alluvium, a type of clay sediment that forms as the flow of a river slows down. Like alluvial fans, other landforms are shaped by nature too and can take thousands or even millions of years to form. Landforms are made up of all kinds of materials. Some of these materials are all over like the earth's crust, a rocky covering around the planet, and even dirt which is a mixture of broken rocks and pieces of dead material from plants and animals. Fossils, which are the remains of things that once lived here on earth, are less common than other materials. Fossils may be found in the dirt or even deeper in the crust below. There are also sediments. Sediments are all kinds of particles that settle on the earth's surface by wind, water, or ice. Kind of like the alluvium that makes the fan-shaped landform that we saw before. Can you guess what the last material is? I'll give you a hint. It ejects from giant openings in the earth's surface. If you said volcanoes, you're right. Volcanoes erupt melted rocks that slowly create all kinds of landforms, just like sediment, dirt, fossils, and the earth's crust. These different materials make up the landforms on earth. Some of them might be underwater while others may sit way up on top of a mountain or deep in a valley down below. There are about 10 different kinds of landforms valleys, plains, plateaus, islands, lakes, oceans, coasts, deserts, and rivers. Let's start with mountains. Mountains are the highest landforms on earth. These tend to be shaped like upside-down ice cream cones with steep sides and ridges. Each mountain has a tip at the very top that we call the peak. The Himalayas are the tallest mountain range in the world, with the highest peak being at the top of Mount Everest. Its elevation or height is 29,030 feet. That's as tall as 48,000 people standing on top of each other's shoulders. Can you imagine hiking all the way to the peak? Valleys, on the other hand, are low-lying areas that tend to sit between mountain ranges and other big landforms. Valleys are formed over time as rivers flow from the mountains above. The most well-known valley in the United States is Death Valley. This valley is the lowest, hottest, and driest area in all of North America. It's found on the east end of California and is over 15 times bigger than New York City. The edge of this valley, like many others, are surrounded by mountains. Plains are the flat areas on our Earth's surface. Some plains, like the Great Plains, are situated in the middle of landmasses. Other plains can be found near the ocean, so we call them coastal plains. The Great Plains are in the United States, spanning across a massive expanse of land. This landform is a huge flat area that makes up the entirety of Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and even parts of six other states. Plateaus are kind of like plains at the top of mountains and hills. There are also flat areas that are situated higher than the land around them. These have steep sides and big cliffs, and they can often be found between mountain ranges. There are all kinds of famous plateaus around the world, like the Lois Plateau, the Colorado Plateau, and the Anatolian Plateau. Some plateaus are even under the ocean, like the Seychelles Plateau or the Entang Java Plateau. We call a piece of land that's surrounded by water an island. Remember the melted rock that volcanoes erupt? That material being erupted over a long period of time is often what forms an island. Islands tend to be found near the coasts of countries, and sometimes their entire countries were continents themselves. For instance, the continent of Australia is an island. Hawaii is one of the 50 United States of America, and it's made up of eight major islands. Hawaii will eventually have more islands because of the active volcano in the waters below. Scientists say that Hawaii's new landform grows almost three inches per year, about the same rate as your fingernails grow. Whoa! Better get them nails clipped. Lakes are bodies of water surrounded by land, almost like the opposite of an island. Lakes come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. They tend to be filled with fresh water, meaning they don't have any salt from the ocean. But there are some rare lakes, like the Great Salt Lake, that are filled with salt water. There are millions of lakes throughout the world. Some, like the Banshee Lake, are a fifth the size of a football field, and others, like the Caspian Sea, are as big as countries. Oceans are the largest bodies of water in the world. About 71% of the Earth's surface is covered in water, and the oceans hold over 96% of all that water. The world has five main oceans, the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Arctic, and the Southern Ocean. These oceans make big waves that land at the coast of each of the seven continents. Some landforms, like mountains and volcanoes, can be found at the bottom of the ocean. Have you ever been to the beach before? If so, then you've been to a coast. Coasts are where the ocean touches the land. Beaches are found along the coasts of land masses, whether they're on an island like Hawaii or on the coast of California. Coasts can also have cliffs at their edges. Back before we had advanced navigational tools, people would point giant lights into the water from lighthouses to make sure boats weren't crashing into the rocky cliffs on the shores. Just like the ocean coast, deserts can be dangerous too. Deserts are hot, dry places that get very little rain. They're huge landforms with lots of sand and very few plants due to the of water. Deserts can often have dunes, which are hills made up of sand. Unlike the daytime, nights in the desert can be extremely cold, and some deserts are even covered in ice, like the Antarctic desert. Do you remember the valley we talked about earlier called Death Valley? Death Valley is considered to be a desert valley due to its extreme lack of rainfall. Other deserts, like the Sahara Desert or the Arabian Desert, are vast expanses of sand in some of the hottest places on Earth. Rivers are long bodies of water that flow through land and into other bodies of water, like lakes and oceans and even other rivers. The Nile River is the river in the world, stretching for over 4,100 miles, flowing through 11 different countries. Wow! That covers all of the major landforms on Earth. Each of these landforms is what makes the world a special place. Some take thousands or even millions of years to form. And like Hawaii, or the Sahara Desert, or even the Great Salt Lake, they're constantly changing. Rivers may get wider while mountains crumble and get smaller. Hurricanes and tsunamis might wear coastlines away until there's something else entirely. Next time you're in a beautiful place, try to think of what landforms are all around you and try to imagine how they all began. Hope you had fun learning with us. 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