This is going to be brief, and perhaps a little ugly. The reason for the brevity is that I could write 2 pages on this or I could write 1000, and it isn't clear that there is much point of writing something in between. Either we take a very high level view or... we get buried in details.

The complexity in understanding the surface environment is that everything is connected to everything. A reductionist approach - breaking it into pieces - will tend to de-emphasize just how everything is one system. A systems approach will wander aimlessly as detail is added. I'm going to take a holistic systems approach but point out in each section the reductionist areas for further investigation.

Rocks fall into three classes, and for our current discussion we'll divide them into those that form at the surface and those that don't. Metamorphic rocks and intrusive igneous rocks are formed at depth. Extrusive (volcanic) igneous rocks and sedimentary rocks (chemical and clastic) get formed at / on the surface. I'm going to skip the extrusive igneous rocks and the treacherous volcanoclastics (rocks that are initially volcanic but immediately become sedimentary, such as water-lain ash from volcanoes) because ultimately these are 'edge cases.'

To make a sedimentary rock you need either ions in solution (for a chemical sediment like a limestone or even a salt deposit) or you need debris. So where does that debris come from? It comes from erosion, either via wind or water processes, with a very small additional component from exotic sources. Ultimately, rocks are made of minerals, as we discussed earlier, and these are for the most part metastable at the surface - they're not spontaneously degrading and they're not super stable, either. At the scale of Earth history a rock that is metastable can last billions of years (we know this because... they do!) but can be reduced to ions and fragments rather easily in the right conditions. Those conditions are mechanical or chemical attack, usually at or near the surface. Chemical attack, especially important in tropical regions, happens when acidic fluids move along fractures and attack rock minerals - especially feldspars and mafic minerals like mica and amphiboles - reducing them to clays and ions in solution. This can extend deep into the subsurface - by surface standards, up to hundreds of meters, but rarely that far, and by 'geological' standards that's still pretty much the surface of the Earth.

Physical attack is via wind and water and, ultimately, gravity. Wind and water can directly attack a rock, but not very effectively. But wind can pick up particles and throw them, leading to further fragmentation. The particles move in a complex way determined by wind patterns, particle size, and of course gravity. This is a very well studied area of sedimentary geoscience and geomorphology. The problem with this mode is that it is highly impeded by surface vegetation and more or less requires arid conditions. Before you discount this, bear in mind that dust from Saharan storms shows up in the Caribbean (though in minor amounts) so the scope can be huge!

Water can directly attack rocks (by chemical attack) or can likewise move particles against solid rock to do mechanical damage. This is of course driven by the available water and by gravity - the water is trying to get away from highlands and move to lowlands and ultimately the ocean, and the erosion and abrasion and deposition that results is thus more or less gravity driven.

A larger and hugely important factor is ice formation. Since ice expands as it freezes, water in a rock fracture will act like a wedge and mechanically disrupt a rock into pieces. In suitably wet conditions this happens each freeze-thaw cycle, which can be dozens to perhaps a hundred times a year in some environments (remember all those days where it is warm during the day but very cold at night, mostly in the local fall or spring...). A second and also effective mode for ice is glacial action, either mountain glaciers or, in the case of polar regions or global glaciation events, large continental ice sheets. Ice sheets abrade the surface and carry debris down-ice, leading to characteristic landforms both in the abraded and the depositional areas.

Okay, so let's back up a bit. We can form debris chemically or mechanically. Wind is important. Ice is important. Rivers are very important. Debris will tend more or less to move down slope.

So starting with some initial topography made of pre-existing rocks (sedimentary, igneous, or metamorphic) we will in the presence of wind and rain and ice and plants start to carve that topography down, making diagnostic landforms. The study of these is geomorphology. Geomorphology is a response to erosion and deposition which is a response to topography which is a response (on Earth) to tectonics and composite geological history. We'll get into those last two in the next 'fundamentals' installment.

We can now say that there may be some characteristic environments that show up in the world as response to all of this:

1. Characteristic erosion of mountains in the presence of glaciers

2. Characteristic erosion of mountains and foothills through rivers (and secondary landslides and rockfalls)

3. Characteristic erosion and deposition in flatter areas in the presence of broad river systems

4. Characteristic erosion and deposition in the presence of continental ice sheets

5. Characteristic erosion and deposition in the presence of coastlines (and their changing positions)

6. Characteristic deposition into deep water (lakes and more commonly oceans).

7. Characteristic deposition and erosion by wind.

Our prime movers are going to be rivers and coastal currents. Volumetrically they dominate, except in the case of glaciation events.

There are huge areas to study further here - river systems, depositional environments and interpretation (e.g. sequence stratigraphy), glaciations and glacial geomorphology, and so on. I'm going to forgo that because as I said, to go one level deeper would require a vast increase in terminology, scope, and detail.

So now you can do something useful. You can go to Google Earth and take a look at various environments and try to figure out how those surface environments came to be. I'd recommend the following few targets:

a. The mountains around Banff, Alberta (glacial and later water action)

b. The mouth of the Mississippi river (large river system, delta processes)

c. The islands along the Texas coast (coastal processes)

d. The Atlas Mountains in northwestern Africa (wind and wind erosion with intermittent water action)

Why all of this foundation? We're going to need it for two resources: coal and oil. When I introduce oil I'm going to introduce some specific sedimentary environments, as I will for coal as well. Another reason for the foundation, of course, is that if you are building an inhabited world, you need food, and food is grown in soil, and soil comes from...