Davisian cycle

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Davisian cycle The orderly series of stages through which it is suggested that land-forms pass from their initial uplift as hills or mountains until erosion finally reduces them to plains. The main stages are youth, when hill gradients are steep and river profiles irregular, maturity, when rivers are incising into the surface more slowly and their profiles are smoother, and old age, when the landscape has a gently rolling surface or is a peneplain. This framework for the study of land-forms is now little used.

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