Landscapes are shaped by time, rock properties, tectonics, climate, biota, and fracture networks - from sub-grain to mountain scale. All such factors influence weathering, and potentially predictable, diagnostic landscape forms. Yet the fracture mechanics underlying development of planar voids is often lumped under ‘strength’ or ‘critical failure’ in surface process paradigms, rather than considering factors such as subcritical cracking or environmental gradients in crack propagation. Similarly, rock physicists seeking insight into factors controlling rock fracturing only rarely take advantage of possible insights gained from exploring material properties in the context of surface processes and landscapes. Thus, there is synergy to be gained from interdisciplinary conversations integrating rock physics research relevant to fracturing at planetary surfaces, and vice versa. This session provides a venue for workers from diverse disciplines including Rock Physics, Surface Processes, Hazards, and Critical Zone Science to explore and share emerging ideas at the interface between these communities.

• EP - Earth and Planetary Surface Processes

• GSA: Geological Society of America -
• SSSA: Soil Science Society of America -