Discover

'Cuesta' is a geological term, used to describe the ridges formed by gently tilted hard rock layers. Every cuesta has a steep slope, where the rock layers are exposed on their edges, called an escarpment or, if more severe, a cliff. Usually an erosion-resistant rock layer also has a more gentle slope on the other side of the ridge called a 'dip slope'. The term derives from the Spanish word for 'slope'.
Two well-known cuestas in western New York and southern Ontario are the Niagara escarpment and the Onondaga escarpment, where the dip is about 40 feet per mile to the south. The escarpment edge faces north and, in its most populated section, runs roughly parallel to the southern Lake Ontario shoreline.
The Gulf Coastal Plain of Texas is punctuated by a series of cuestas that parallel the coast. The cuestas have gentle slopes gulf-ward to the southeast and steeper northwest-facing escarpments. The Reynosa Plateau is the most coast-ward cuesta, which sees surface expression with the Bordes-Oakville escarpment, on the northwest side and a low ridge on the eastern boundary, called the Reynosa cuesta, where the deposits dip below later Pliocene-Pleistocene deposits of the Willis and Lissie Formation.
Cuestas have less dramatic expression in the United Kingdom, with two notable examples being the northwest-facing escarpment of the Jurassic chalk White Horse Hills and the similarly-aligned escarpment of the Cotswolds. In continental Europe, the Swabian Alb offers particularly good views of cuestas in Jurassic rock. In France, the term for a cuesta is the same as for a coastline: "côte". Notable French cuestas are the wine-growing regions of Côte d'Or and Côtes du Rhône.

Contents

See also

External links

See also

★ Escarpment

★ Dip slope

★ Strike and dip

★ Hogback

External links

★ Escarpment geology