orography

plural orographies · alternative oreography

1. uncountableusuallygeographyThe scientific study, or a physical description of mountains.

   Orography: A description of mountains.

   1846, Joseph Emerson Worcester, A universal and critical dictionary of the English language: to which are added Walker's Key to the pronunciation of classical and Scripture proper names, much enlarged and improved, and a pronouncing vocabulary of modern geographical names, Boston: Wilkins, Carter, and Company, published 1849, page 501

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   A knowledge of the Hydrography of a country aids as much in determining its geology as does its Orography, — that is, a description of its mountains.

   1853, Edward Hitchcock, “The Geology of the Globe”, in Outline of the Geology of the Globe and of the United States in Particular with Sketches of Characteristic American Fossils., Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Company, page 10

2. uncountableusuallyThe orographic features of a region.

   The independent scientists of the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) expressed concerns about how the spectral model would deal with steep mountains.[…]It was this work that lead to development of the envelope orography outlined below.

   2006, Austin Woods, Medium-Range Weather Prediction: The European Approach, page 105

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   Morocco was in 1883-1884 the scene of important explorations by de Foucauld, a Frenchman who, disguised as a Jew, crossed and re-crossed the Atlas and supplied the first trustworthy information as to the orography of many parts of the chain.

   1911, “Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition”, in Africa

   Most flows actually occur, of course, over non-uniform orography and consequently in numerical models of such flows it is necessary to transform the coordinates so that the equations accurately represent flows in such terrain (Gal-Chen and Somerville 1975).

   1995, B. W. Atkinson, “Introduction to the fluid mechanics of meso-scale flow fields”, in A. Gyr, Franz-S. Rys, editors, Diffusion and Transport of Pollutants in Atmospheric Mesoscale Flow Fields, page 20