Erosion is a dynamic process. A transportation process included in the exogenetic forces produced on the earth’s surface transforms a projected land part into finally a leveled plain part. The word ‘Erosion’ has originated from the Latin word ‘Erodore’, which means scrubbing or nibbling.
Factors of Erosion: Factors of erosion refer to the forces and agents like river flow and oceanic waves, winds, underground water and glaciers which participate in the process of erosion. All these factors perform levelling of relief forms created by exogenetic forces on a land part. It is not essential for all the factors to remain equally active in the process of erosion. Above is the description of topographies formed by all these factors of erosion.
It is clear from the above table that there are five major components of erosion. All these five components form mainly two types of topographies:
1. Erosional topography.
2. Depositional topography.
Among both these types of topographies, erosional topographies are formed by erosion while depositional topographies are formed by deposition.
