Weathering causes many small individual erosion events to take place.  We can think of this as bits of rocks falling off a cliff face one by one and piling up in a talus slope at the bottom of a cliff.  Mass wasting on the other hand, is a mass movement of many pieces of soil and/or regolith all at once, resulting in an accumulation of colluvium at the base of the slope.  In both cases this downhill movement is caused by gravity.  Your text book discusses the differences between various forms of mass wasting including soil creep, earth flows, rotational slumps, mudflow/debris floods, landslides and rockfalls (pages 342 -346).  Variables such as material type, rock strength, soil moisture, temperature, and slope inclination will affect the type of mass wasting event.  They will also affect the travel distance of the colluvium.  Factors such as the amount of water present will affect the distance colluvium can flow, but in other situations the material type and thickness can trap a layer of air beneath itself, which will increase the distance it can travel.  The absence of these situations would result in shorter travel distances.

• Focusing on the top section of the slope at our study site, what angle would you estimate the inclination to be (highlight one) (1) – 5˚, 15˚, 45˚, 90˚
• Using the height of the slope as a relative measurement, how far did the colluvium travel from the slope (highlight one) (1) – 1X, 2X, 4X, 8X

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