THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT

Endogenic processes build rough mountains and exogenic processes melt them away, bit by tiny bit. The constant erosive wearing, dissolving, and scraping of the rock gouges, sculpts and flattens mountains.

The debris knocked loose in these assaults flows downhill to be deposited in areas of low relief, filling basins, shallow lakes, and seas. Together these forces of erosion and deposition smooth out the roughest terrain and flatten the Earth's solid surface.

This chapter introduces two of the most powerful and widespread agents of mountain destruction, landslides and water, and shows how they have affected the development of landforms in Hawai'i.