Whether or not natural landscapes behave in a generally fractal manner has been the subject of some research. Technically speaking, any surface in three-dimensional space has a topological dimension of 2, and therefore any fractal surface in three-dimensional space has a Hausdorff dimension between 2 and 3. Real landscapes however, have varying behavior at different scales. This means that an attempt to calculate the 'overall' fractal dimension of a real landscape can result in measures of negative fractal dimension, or of fractal dimension above 3. In particular, many studies of natural phenomena, even those commonly thought to exhibit fractal behavior; do not do so, over more than a few orders of magnitude. For instance, Richardson's examination of the western coastline of Britain showed fractal behavior of the coastline over only two orders of magnitude. In general, there is no reason to suppose that the geological processes that shape terrain on large scales (for example plate tectonics) exhibit the same mathematical behavior as those that shape terrain on smaller scales (for instance, soil creep).