Geomorphic Unit Scale

What Is A Geomorphic Unit?

A river channel is a complex configuration of morphologies, ranging from the dendritic drainage networks at the catchment scale to cobble clusters at the centimeter scale. Scientists have long recognized landforms with distinct local form–process associations at ~ 1–10 channel widths scale that may be the fundamental building blocks describing the geomorphic structure of a river. These landforms go by various synonymous names, including geomorphic unit, morphological unit, and channel unit. The last of these only suffers for its constraint in the channel, whereas a geomorphic unit or morphological unit can occur any where. The choice to use geomorphic unit or morphological unit is merely semantic and subjective, with the choice varying regionally around the world.

For more information on landforms at this scale, see this research by Wyrick and Pasternack.