Editing Erosion (section)

===Tectonics===
{{Main|Erosion and tectonics}}
Tectonic processes control rates and distributions of erosion at the Earth's surface. If the tectonic action causes part of the Earth's surface (e.g., a mountain range) to be raised or lowered relative to surrounding areas, this must necessarily change the gradient of the land surface. Because erosion rates are almost always sensitive to the local slope (see above), this will change the rates of erosion in the uplifted area. Active tectonics also brings fresh, unweathered rock towards the surface, where it is exposed to the action of erosion.

However, erosion can also affect tectonic processes. The removal by erosion of large amounts of rock from a particular region, and its deposition elsewhere, can result in a lightening of the load on the [[crust (geology)|lower crust]] and [[mantle (geology)|mantle]]. Because tectonic processes are driven by gradients in the stress field developed in the crust, this unloading can in turn cause [[tectonic uplift|tectonic]] or [[isostasy|isostatic uplift]] in the region.<ref name=Nichols/>{{rp|99}}<ref>{{cite book|author1=Burbank, Douglas W.  |author2=Anderson, Robert S.|chapter=Tectonic and surface uplift rates|title=Tectonic Geomorphology|publisher=John Wiley & Sons|year=2011|isbn=978-1-4443-4504-9|pages=270–271|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=83FuAvtSwE4C&pg=PT270}}</ref> In some cases, it has been hypothesised that these twin feedbacks can act to localize and enhance zones of very rapid exhumation of deep crustal rocks beneath places on the Earth's surface with extremely high erosion rates, for example, beneath the extremely steep terrain of [[Nanga Parbat]] in the western [[Himalaya]]s. Such a place has been called a "[[River anticlines#Tectonic aneurysms|tectonic aneurysm]]".<ref>Zeitler, P.K. et al. (2001), Erosion, Himalayan Geodynamics, and the Geomorphology of Metamorphism, GSA Today, 11, 4–9.</ref>