Mountain, Hill, and Ridge Features
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What Was That?"}
How to Use This Tool: Say you just flew over some interesting mountain feature, and now you want to know what it is. Scroll down through some of the possibilities below. If you find what you're looking for, you can open it in Google Earth by clicking the Google Earth icon: 
| Butte - A small, isolated, flat-topped hill, usually found in deserts. {read more} |
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Scale: Images are taken from an altitude of ~35,000 feet, and so are each ~1 mile across.
Open these examples in Google Earth, or download all of the landforms
here.
| Mesa - A flat-topped mountain with steep sides, usually larger than a butte, usually found in a desert. {read more} |
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Scale: Images are taken from an altitude of ~35,000 feet, and so are each ~1 mile across.
Open these examples in Google Earth, or download all of the landforms
here.
| Monadnock / Inselberg- An isolated mountain that rises abruptly from otherwise level ground. {read more} |
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Scale: Images are taken from an altitude of ~35,000 feet, and so are each ~1 mile across.
Open these examples in Google Earth, or download all of the landforms
here.
| Fold Limb - Fold limbs can look like ridges: long, linear mountains with crests at the top. Ridges can be due to a variety of geologic landforms, but, in highly folded areas of the country - like the Appalachians - they are frequently fold limbs. {read more} |
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Scale: Images are taken from an altitude of ~35,000 feet, and so are each ~1 mile across.
Open these examples in Google Earth, or download all of the landforms
here.
| Hogbacks - Steeply tilting rock layers which stick up out of the ground like spine vertebrae. Sometimes they can form triangle-shaped wedges that lay against the sides of mountains. {read more} |
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Scale: Images are taken from an altitude of ~35,000 feet, and so are each ~1 mile across.
Open these examples in Google Earth, or download all of the landforms
here.
| Thrust Sheets - Thrust sheets can also produce ridges. The ridges below are the edges of giant sheets of rock that were thrust up on top of other rocks during a mountain-building event. The thrust sheets tend to form several long, parallel ridges. Note: Not all thrust faults look like this! These are special cases. {read more} |
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Scale: Images are taken from an altitude of ~35,000 feet, and so are each ~1 mile across.
Open these examples in Google Earth, or download all of the landforms
here.
| Syncline - Folded layers of rocks can make beautiful mountains. Syncline folds look like smiley-faces; anticlines look like frowney-faces. When viewed from above, synclines tend to have valleys in the middle; anticlines tend to be raised in the middle. Syncline mountains are common in the Appalachian Valley and Ridge Province {read more} |
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Scale: Images are taken from an altitude of ~35,000 feet, and so are each ~1 mile across.
Open these examples in Google Earth, or download all of the landforms
here.
| Anticline - Folded layers of rocks can make beautiful mountains. Syncline folds look like smiley-faces; anticlines look like frowney-faces. When viewed from above, synclines tend to have valleys in the middle; anticlines tend to be raised in the middle. Anticline mountains are common in the Appalachian Valley and Ridge Province. {read more} |
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Scale: Images are taken from an altitude of ~35,000 feet, and so are each ~1 mile across.
Open these examples in Google Earth, or download all of the landforms
here.
| Cirque - A curved mountain face formed by glacial erosion. The cirque on the right is outlined in red to illustrate {read more} |
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Scale: Images are taken from an altitude of ~11 miles, and so are each ~3 miles across.
Open these examples in Google Earth, or download all of the landforms
here.
| Glacier - U.S. glaciers are usually only seen in Montana or Alaska. The ones shown below are Montana glaciers. {read more} |
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Scale: Images are taken from an altitude of ~35,000 feet, and so are each ~1 mile across.
Open these examples in Google Earth, or download all of the landforms
here.
| Alluvial Fan - Fan-shaped sediment deposit at the base of a mountain. {read more} |
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Scale: Images are taken from an altitude of ~35,000 feet, and so are each ~1 mile across.
Open these examples in Google Earth, or download all of the landforms
here.
| Drumlin - A long, narrow hill formed by a retreating glacier. Common in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Boston, etc. They are often distinctive, since they can occur as swarms of long, narrow hills, all pointing North (or North-ish). From above, these swarms can look like long striations on the landscape {read more} |
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Scale: Images are taken from an altitude of ~35,000 feet, and so are each ~1 mile across.
Open these examples in Google Earth, or download all of the landforms
here.
| Esker - A long, sinuous ridge of sand, presumably formed as sandy streams cutting down, through, or underneath glaciers. When the glacier retreats, the pile of stream sediment is left behind. You can spot them as long, sinuous ridges in the northern, formerly glaciated parts of the country {read more} |
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Scale: Images are taken from an altitude of ~35,000 feet, and so are each ~1 mile across.
Open these examples in Google Earth, or download all of the landforms
here.
| Moraine - A pile of glacial debris (sand, gravel, etc.) that is left behind as the glacier retreats. They tend to be long, sinuous mounds of sand. {read more} |
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Scale: Images are taken from an altitude of ~35,000 feet, and so are each ~1 mile across.
Open these examples in Google Earth, or download all of the landforms
here.
| Cinder Cone - A small, steep mountain of volcanic ash and cinder that accumulates around a small volcanic vent. They are common in the Southwest (especially Arizona) and in the Cascades. They're easily identified by their small, conical shape, and the large gaping hole on top. You can often see recent (solidified) lava flows pouring from their tops {read more} |
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Scale: Images are taken from an altitude of ~35,000 feet, and so are each ~1 mile across.
Open these examples in Google Earth, or download all of the landforms
here.
| Lava Dome - A small, budging dome of slowly-oozing lava, usually found near active volcanic zones, like the Cascades. From above, they look like raised pimples on the landscape. {read more} |
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Scale: Images are taken from an altitude of ~35,000 feet, and so are each ~1 mile across.
Open these examples in Google Earth, or download all of the landforms
here.
| Exposed Dike - Dikes form when lava cuts up through overlying rock, usually on its way to the surface. As the overlying layers are eroded away, dikes can appear on the surface as long, resistant ridges, often a different color than the surrounding landscape. {read more} |
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Scale: Images are taken from an altitude of ~35,000 feet, and so are each ~1 mile across.
Open these examples in Google Earth, or download all of the landforms
here.
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