Great Scarps Above Sea Coasts in Global Morphotectonics

High and extensive tectonic scarps play an important part in global morphotectonics, and are one of the basic tectonic landforms of the southern continental and subcontinental margins and transition zones between the continent and the ocean in the east of Asia. These are proper rear boundaries of continental margins, the geodynamics of which are characterized by rifting on shelves, continental slopes, and marginal oceanic depressions. Great scarps are initiated at the thinning and breaking of the continental lithosphere and have a long phase in the ensuing development, with a successive self parallel retreat—a process that may be defined as tectonic planation, with the occurrence of a basal surface for shelf sediments. Great scarps are seen located above the passive continental margins and in the rear boundaries of the belt of transition from the continent to the ocean, in the western Pacific. Great scarps are uncommon in intracontinental regions and tend to have additional morphotectonic features at the land elevation and land subsidence boundaries.