Topography Types for Dummies

Alpine glacial topography

One of our staffers is a diehard fan of singer Joan Osborne. Joan's take on life, she tells us, is just about the right blend of angst and attitude. That's why every once in a while she likes to sneak some Osborne lyrics into her nominations. Today, it's "What if the cure is worse than the disease?"¹ It's a nod to the rework of "Topography Types" that June Kane posted to Sciencing.com. The original, done for eHow.com by Jennifer Uhl, was bad enough, but this one? It's laughable...

Kane, a radiation therapist by trade, apparently didn't take geography or physical geology on the way to her Associates degree. Where Uhl's list consisted of brief discussions of "mountains, hills, plains, glaciers, water"; Kane landed exactly two "types": mountains and karst. Kudos to June for finding out that karst is a thing, forty lashes with a wet noodle for claiming that karst topography consists of,

"[C]aves, fissures, underground wells, jagged hills, cliffs, river beds and other types of terrain..."

...which pretty much means that everything is karst. Don't you agree? June follows up on that by explaining that,

"Topographical maps show landforms such as hills and mountains. Contour lines mark where mountains and hills are located and represent their features..."

Wait, what? Kane's assignment was to provide a list of topography types, not conflate topography types with topographic maps! But it gets worse: June follows up on that theme by explaining symbology on topographic maps! What a load of horse-hockey!

Uhl's previous version was on the right track: she at least tried to list topographic features instead of attempt to explain topographic maps. Kane's sole contribution to the discussion is her use of the word "karst." Off the top of our head, she missed about a bazillion different "types of topography," including such classifications as alpine glacial, continental glacial, shoreline, volcanic, dune fields, fluvial, swamp, piedmont...

...all words that, among others, should have appeared in the post written by our Dumbass of the Day. But they didn't: need we say more?

¹ From the song "Dracula Moon" on Joan's 1995 album Relish

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