Abstract Central America and the Caribbean islands encompass an extraordinarily diverse suite of geomorphic processes and land-forms created by the interaction of distinctly different climatic, tectonic, and lithologie domains. The purpose of this overview is to review some of the significant types of geomorphic contributions from the region; to provide a summary of the climatic and tectonic setting of the region; and to introduce the four sections that comprise this chapter. Climatic extremes within the region are significant for their impact on process and form diversity. For example, during the Pleistocene a climate gradient created by topographic relief produced glacial deposits in the Cordillera de Talamanca, Costa Rica (Hastenrath, 1973), that are only several kilometers from economic laterite and bauxite oxisols in the adjoining Valle de El General (Castillo and others, 1970). Modern climatic zones range from wet tropical with annual rainfall in excess of 4.0 m in parts of Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Panama to dry tropical steppe with annual rainfall not exceeding 1.0 m in parts of Nicaragua, Honduras, and the Caribbean. Some of these climatic zones at lower elevations that did not experience the dramatic Pleistocene climatic oscillations of North America provide superb locations for the study of climate, process, and form without the overprint of relict climatic landforms. Superimposed on the climatic diversity is an active plate setting that juxtaposes areas of rapid crustal movement and complex geology with relatively more stable carbonate platforms, for example, in the area of the Yucatan and Motagua fault zone. This