orography

Noun

orography (usually uncountable, plural orographies)

1. (usually) The 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...
   • 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...
2. (usually) The orographic features of a region.
   • 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...