Abstract:
Geomorphology has not produced a general theory. In contrast, geotectonics has its Plate tectonics, adopted by the vast majority of geologists as a general theory of geology. It emerged after geophysics revealed the structure of the Earth’s crust, a solid lithosphere of continental and ocean type over a plastic astenosphere. And after exploring the ocean and sea floors and studying their peculiarities – the mid-ocean ridges, their symmetrical magnetic anomalies, linear elongated deep-water grooves marking the subduction of the tectonic plates, the ocean-bed movement (spreading) and revealing the mechanism of their formation.
Meanwhile, in geomorphology, mostly Russian, a number of publications have been reported to establish key global laws, for example: the endogenous processes create the prevailing roughness of the Earth’s surface, primarily the continents and oceans; on a planetary scale, their activity is totally commensurate with that of exogenous processes destroying this roughness; the rising mountain areas are intensely denuded – a process that makes them lighter thus assisting their rise; the sediments conveyed from the continents to the ocean floor accumulate mainly in the sinking abyssal grooves, which facilitates the subduction and thus the movement of the tectonic plates; in fact, a geodynamic flow of ocean floor motion is carried out under the influence of the plastic masses in the astenosphere towards the continents and the rise of the latter and a quantitatively equivalent morpholythodynamic flow of ground mass movement in the opposite direction sinking the continents under the action of the hydrosphere, atmosphere and the biosphere, driven by solar energy; it has recently become clear that the morpho-lythodynamic flow takes place within the socalled morphospheric basins falling entirely within the boundaries of the morphosphere (the area of hypergenesis) – the topmost part of the lithosphere; it becomes increasingly clear that if the lithosphere, lithospheric plates, and geodynamic flow are the object and subject of geotectonic research, the morphosphere, morphospheric basins, and morpholythodynamic flow can be the object and subject of geomorphology alone. It follows that the relief paradigm as a product of the interaction of endogenous and exogenous processes must be replaced by the morphospheric paradigm as such product (the relief is only an element, the upper limit of the morphosphere). And also that the geodynamic and morpholythodynamic flow pairs, lithosphere and morphosphere, lithospheric plates and morphospheric basins and geotectonics and geomorphology respectively, and their theories are related to each other as both sides of the same coin. This requires a paradigm shift from division between endogenous and exogenous forces to their interaction in building the earth’s crust and maintaining its isostasis. Which implies the addition of the Plate tectonics to the basins geomorphology to make it a complete general theory of geology