Origin of the Physiography of Sri Lanka: Association of Plate Tectonic and Sea Level Change

Sri Lanka has been internationally recognized as a country with high geodiversity in both past and present eras. The landscape of a country determines many of its other factors. The beauty, biodiversity, natural resources and their abundance as well as the cultural landscape would be determined by the landscape or relief features. In the map drawn by Idris in 1154 A.C., he had named Sri Lanka as “Serendip”. “Serendip” was an Arabic word. The meaning of this word is “amazing movement due to accidental good” or “unexpected happy event.” Sri Lanka consists of an environment that can amaze anyone when traveling a short distance by seeing its geodiversity, biodiversity and the associated environmental conditions. The broader purpose of writing this article is to consider entire Sri Lanka as a single unit and to investigate how the evolution of its topography or to analyze how such a geodiversity was formed. For this, consideration is given to how the birth of this country or the geological evolution of the earth’s crust occurred. The relevant data for this study was collected from the field studies covering the selected geographical regions. Secondary data was collected by analyzing the 1:50 000 scaled maps which was prepared and published by the Survey Department of Sri Lanka. Arial photographs and the segments extracted from the relief feature maps from the Google Earth web page.

 

The spatial distribution of geomorphological features and their evolution are powerful phenomena that determine the pace of development of a country and its orientation. Accordingly, it has an importance to pay a close attention on the spatial distribution and the evolution of the geomorphological features when preparation and implementation of development plannings.