Escarpment

Escarpment face of a cuesta, broken by a fault, overlooking Trenton, Cloudland Canyon State Park, and Lookout Mountain in the U.S. state of Georgia

An escarpment is a steep slope or long cliff that forms as a result of faulting or erosion and separates two relatively level areas having different elevations.

Similarity causes the term scarp to be incorrectly used interchangeably with escarpment, which refers to the margin between two landforms as opposed to scarp, which refers to a cliff or a steep slope. In this usage, an escarpment is a ridge that has a gentle slope on one side and a steep scarp on the other side.

More loosely, the term scarp also describes a zone between a coastal lowland and a continental plateau that shows a marked, abrupt change in elevation caused by coastal erosion at the base of the plateau.

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