This textbook is intended to be used in a lecture course for college students majoring in the Earth Sciences. Planetary science provides an opportunity for these students to apply a wide range of subject matter pertaining to the Earth to the study of other planets of the solar system and their principal satellites.

Morphologic attributes of the contemporary geomorphic landscape and its component form elements evolve from the activity of environment-regulated process domains acting in the present, and local and regional-scale process rates governed by conditions external and internal to geomorphic systems. These process–response systems establish landscape characteristics in equilibrium with the movement, storage, and transfer of energy and matter between interrelated and interdependent components of the system. Characteristics of geomorphic landscapes also evolve through time, suggesting that conditions of equilibrium and disequilibrium between opposing forces persist in the process–form adjustment. In certain instances, therefore, landscapes and their constituent landforms inherit the imprint of past process activities, and still others are relics of processes no longer active in the present <...>

This preface presents the sixth edition of our remote sensing text. During the interval that has elapsed since our fifth edition, the pace of remote sensing has increased in several respects, expanding the scope of our text and presenting new content.

The small-scale structures referred to in this publication are those structures of tectonic origin that can be observed with the naked eye in the field. Their scale varies broadly between that of the hand-specimen to that of the exposure, or even mountainside. Such structures are the visible effects of rock deformation caused by local stresses and movements which have been induced in the rocks by external tectonic forces of possibly unknown origin. Recognition of these minor structures, and appreciation of their origin and significance assist the field geologist to elucidate the larger-scale geological structures of his area.