page_title: Escarpment
section_title: Formation and description
hierarchical_section_title: Escarpment / Formation and description
caption_attribution_description: Cuesta schematic - drawn in Inkscape - darkly colored hard layers of rock, lightly colored softer layers.
context_page_description: An escarpment is a steep slope or long cliff that forms as a result of faulting or erosion and separates two relatively level areas having different elevations. Usually scarp and scarp face are used interchangeably with escarpment.
  Some sources differentiate the two terms, however, where escarpment refers to the margin between two landforms. In this usage an escarpment is a ridge which has a gentle slope on one side and a steep scarp on the other side.
  More loosely, the term scarp also describes a zone between a coastal lowland and a continental plateau which shows a marked, abrupt change in elevation caused by coastal erosion at the base of the plateau.
context_section_description: Scarps are generally formed by one of two processes: either by differential erosion of sedimentary rocks, or by movement of the Earth's crust at a geologic fault.  The first is the more common type: the escarpment is a transition from one series of sedimentary rocks to another series of a different age and composition.  Escarpments are also frequently formed by faults. When a fault displaces the ground surface so that one side is higher than the other, a fault scarp is created.  This can occur in dip-slip faults, or when a strike-slip fault brings a piece of high ground adjacent to an area of lower ground.
  Earth is not the only planet where escarpments occur. They are believed to occur on other planets when the crust contracts, as a result of cooling. On other Solar System bodies such as Mercury, Mars, and the Moon, the Latin term rupes is used for an escarpment.
caption: Schematic cross section of a cuesta, dip slopes facing left, and harder rocklayers in darker colors than softer ones.
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