• Journal of The Geomorphological Association of Korea
• /
• v.23 no.3
• /
• pp.93-104
• /
• 2016

High school textbooks of world geography show geomorphic featuresin arid environments such as sand dune, yardang and ventifact which are largely created by aeolian processes. Desert pavements, ubiquitous armored surfaces composed of a mosaic of clasts in hot and arid regions, are introduced as a major landform which can be attributed to wind erosion. However, they are formed by a variety of processes including deflation, surface runoff, upward clast migration and dust accretion that cause coarse particles concentration at the surface. The deflation by wind leaving a lag of coarse clasts has been solely regarded at home, even though the classical mechanism of deflation has been evaluated as a relatively unimportant process of pavement formation abroad through empiricalstudies. The accretionary model is gaining wider acceptance, thus implying that desert pavements could be formed through deposition of aeolian material. In addition, sheetflood and upward migration of clasts, irrelevant to the aeolian processes, could also create stone pavements. As a consequence, the deflation process in high school textbooks has to be urgently modified into a range of processes including aeolian mantling. By stressing that desert pavements are an exceptional geomorphic feature in deserts where wind is a predominant geomorphic agent, they can be used as a good example to demonstrate that a landform is not monogenetic.