Escarpment face of a cuesta, broken by a fault. Cumberland Plateau, Tennessee.

An escarpment is a steep slope or long cliff that occurs from erosion or faulting and separates two relatively level areas of differing elevations.

Description and variants[link]

Usually escarpment is used interchangeably with scarp (from the Italian scarpa, shoe^[1]). But some sources differentiate the two terms, where escarpment refers to the margin between two landforms, while scarp is synonymous with a cliff or steep slope.^[2][3] The surface of the steep slope is called a scarp face. Scarps are generally formed by one of two processes: either by differential erosion of sedimentary rocks, or by vertical movement of the Earth's crust along a fault (faulting).

Schematic cross section of a cuesta, dip slopes facing left, and harder rocklayers in darker colors than softer ones.

Most commonly, an escarpment is a transition from one series of sedimentary rocks to another series of a different age and composition. When sedimentary beds are tilted and exposed to the surface, erosion and weathering may occur differentially based on the composition. Less resistant rocks will erode faster, retreating until the point they are overlain by more resistant rock (see cross section schematic). When the dip of the bedding is gentle, a cuesta is formed. Steeper dips (greater than 30-40°)^[2] form hogbacks.

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.

More loosely, the term scarp describes the zone between coastal lowlands and continental plateaus which have a marked, abrupt change in elevation caused by coastal erosion at the base of the plateau.

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.

Shaded and colored image (i.e. enhanced) from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission—shows an elevation model of New Zealand's Alpine Fault running about 500 km (300 mi) long. The escarpment is flanked by a vast chain of hills squeezed between the fault and the mountains of New Zealand's Southern Alps. Northeast is towards the top.

Significant escarpments[link]

Africa[link]

• Elgeyo escarpment (Great Rift Valley)
• God's Window (South Africa)
• Great Escarpment (South Africa)
• Bandiagara Escarpment (Mali)
• Zambezi Escarpment (Zambia)
• Scarp of Angola (Angola)

Antarctica[link]

• Usas Escarpment

Asia[link]

• Vindhyan Escarpment (India)

Australia and New Zealand[link]

• Australia
  • Darling Scarp
  • Dorrigo Plateau
  • Illawarra Escarpment
  • Nullarbor Escarpment
• New Zealand
  • The western slope of the Southern Alps (along the Alpine Fault)
  • The Kaimai escarpment, above the Hauraki Plains

Europe[link]

• England
  • Cotswold escarpment
  • North Downs
  • South Downs
  • A colloquial adjective to describe escarpments in England is "edge" as in
    • Alderley Edge
    • Edge Hill famous as the place of the first battle of the English Civil War.
    • Kinver Edge
    • The Lincoln Edge
    • Wenlock Edge
• France
  • La Côte d'Or is famous for its wines and has given its name to a département, Côte-d'Or.
  • Le Pays de Bray, a clay vale enclosed by chalk escarpments.

• Sweden, Estonia and Russia
  • Baltic Klint
  • Gotland–Saaremaa Klint
• Malta
  • Victoria Lines

The Sierra Escarpment in California.

North America[link]

• Canada and the United States
  • Pembina Escarpment (Manitoba, North Dakota)
  • Niagara Escarpment (Ontario, Illinois, Michigan, New York, and Wisconsin)
  • Eardley Escarpment (Mattawa Fault, Gatineau Park, Quebec)
  • Onondaga (geological formation) (Ontario and New York)
  • Devil's Rock (Lake Temiskaming, Ontario)
• United States
  • Devil's Slide (Northern California)
  • Allegheny Front (Pennsylvania-Maryland-West Virginia)
  • Balcones Fault (Texas)
  • Bergen Hill (New Jersey)
  • Blue Ridge Escarpment (South Carolina-Georgia)
  • Book Cliffs (Utah-Colorado)
  • Caprock Escarpment (Texas)
  • Catskill Escarpment (New York)
  • Cody Scarp (Florida)
  • Elkhorn Scarp (San Andreas Fault)
  • Highland Rim encircling the Nashville Basin (actually a geologic dome) in Middle Tennessee
  • Knobstone Escarpment (Southern Indiana)
  • Mescalero Escarpment (New Mexico)
  • Missouri Escarpment (North Dakota)
  • Mogollon Rim (Arizona)
  • Muldraugh Hill (Kentucky)
  • Pine Ridge (Nebraska and South Dakota)
  • Pottsville Escarpment (Kentucky-Tennessee; see Cumberland Plateau)
  • Sierra Nevada range (eastern slope) in California
  • Sigsbee Escarpment, Gulf of Mexico
  • Portage Escarpment (Ohio)
  • Potrero Hills in Richmond, California
• The Caribbean
  • Bahamas Escarpment (Bahamas)

See also[link]

• Cuesta
• Fall line
• List of scarps on Mercury

References[link]

1. ^ scarp - Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
2. ^ ^{a b} Easterbrook, D. J. (1999) Surface processes and landforms. (Second Ed). Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.
3. ^ Summary: Escarpments, US Army Corps of Engineers.

Sarah Harmer
Sarah Harmer at the 2010 Vancouver International Folk Music Festival
Background information
Born	(1970-11-12) November 12, 1970 (age 41)
Origin	Burlington, Ontario, Canada
Genres	Folk Pop/Rock
Occupations	singer/songwriter
Instruments	vocals, guitar, bass, drums
Years active	1987–present
Labels	Cold Snap Records
Associated acts	The Saddletramps Weeping Tile
Website	www.sarahharmer.com

Sarah Harmer (born November 12, 1970) is a Canadian singer-songwriter and activist.^[1]

Biography[link]

Born and raised in Burlington, Ontario, Harmer gained her first exposure to the musician's lifestyle as a teenager, when her older sister Mary started taking her to Tragically Hip concerts. At the age of 17, she was invited to join a Toronto band, The Saddletramps. For three years, she juggled The Saddletramps with her studies in philosophy and women's studies at Queen's University.^[2]

After leaving The Saddletramps, Harmer put together a band of her own with several Kingston, Ontario musicians, and settled on the name Weeping Tile. The band released its first independent cassette in 1994. Soon afterward, they signed to a major label, and the cassette was re-released in 1995 as an EP. The band quickly became a popular draw on the rock club circuit and on campus radio with their subsequent albums, but never broke through to the mainstream, and broke up in 1998 after being dropped from their label.^[2]

Also in 1998, Harmer recorded a set of pop standards as a Christmas gift for her father. After hearing it, her friends and family convinced her to release it as an album, and in 1999 she released it independently as Songs for Clem. Harmer quickly began working on another album, and in 2000, she released You Were Here.^[2]

A poppier, more laid-back effort than her work with Weeping Tile, You Were Here became Harmer's mainstream breakthrough, spawning the hits "Basement Apartment" and "Don't Get Your Back Up". The album also appeared on many critics' year-end lists, including TIME magazine, which called it the year's best debut album. It was eventually certified platinum for sales of 100,000 copies in Canada. Almost half of the album (including both of its major hits) consisted of songs she had previously recorded with Weeping Tile or The Saddletramps.

In 2004, she released All of Our Names. The album included the singles "Almost", which made the top 20 on Canadian pop charts, and "Pendulums".

Her fourth album, I'm a Mountain, was released in Canada on November 8, 2005 and in the United States in February 2006. It was nominated for the 2006 Polaris Music Prize, a jury-selected $20,000 cash prize for the Canadian album of the year.

Harmer has also appeared as a guest vocalist on albums by other artists, including Blue Rodeo, Great Big Sea, Rheostatics, Bruce Cockburn, Luther Wright and the Wrongs, Skydiggers, The Weakerthans, Neko Case, Great Lake Swimmers and Bob Wiseman.

In February 2007, Harmer received three Juno Award nominations. I'm a Mountain was up for Best Adult Alternative Album and her DVD Escarpment Blues was up for Best Music DVD. Sarah herself was also up for Songwriter of the Year for her work on "I Am Aglow", "Oleander" and "Escarpment Blues".

In 2010, Harmer released a fifth album, Oh Little Fire, which has been nominated for three Juno Awards.

In 2011, Harmer participated in the National Parks Project, visiting British Columbia's Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage Site with Bry Webb, Jim Guthrie and filmmaker Scott Smith.^[3] She was also commissioned by CBC Radio 2 to write an original campfire song for the network.^[4]

Activism[link]

In 2005, Harmer co-founded PERL (Protecting Escarpment Rural Land), an organization which campaigned to protect the Niagara Escarpment from a proposed gravel development which would see some parts of wilderness near the escarpment removed.^[5] To support the organization, she and her acoustic band embarked on a tour of the escarpment, hiking the Bruce Trail and performing at theatres and community halls in towns along the way. A documentary DVD of this tour was released in 2006 as Escarpment Blues.

Harmer has performed and canvassed in support of the NDP and Marilyn Churley, her friend in the fight for the protection of the Niagara Escarpment.

Discography[link]

Albums[link]

Singles[link]

In 2007, Harmer also reunited with Weeping Tile to record a song, "Public Square", for the Rheostatics tribute album The Secret Sessions.

Publications[link]

• Peter E. Kelly, Douglas W. Larson, Sarah Harmer, The Last Stand : A Journey Through the Ancient Cliff-Face Forest of the Niagara Escarpment, Natural Heritage Books, 2007, ISBN 978-1-897045-19-0 (paperback).

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Sarah Harmer

• Sarah Harmer
• PERL