"unstable terrain" is a perfectly acceptable phrase in written English.
It is most commonly used to refer to a physical landscape such as a rocky hillside, but it can also be used figuratively to refer to a difficult or unpredictable situation. For example: "Navigating the ethical challenges of the modern workplace demands traversing unstable terrain."
The avalanche occurred on Tuesday morning but a search was hampered by unstable terrain.
Erratic winds and steep, unstable terrain made the fire, which was discovered on Friday, hard to fight.
Even if I could write convincingly about the revolution, it seemed unwise to construct a book on such unstable terrain.
On the other hand, Sander was concerned with class distinctions and social roles, while Arbus harrowed the more subjective, unstable terrain of eroticism and gender.
Crumbling outdoor steps, loose wall-to-wall carpeting, and uneven floorboards make for unstable terrain that's harder to navigate when you have balance problems.
And the threats to Europe are forming on unstable terrain east and south of its borders, where state structures are either weak or disintegrating.
In steep, potentially unstable terrains, ground-based continuous monitoring of hillslope and hydrological processes is still highly localized and expensive, especially in terms of manpower.
By Alex Ross Price's Second Violin Concerto explores unstable harmonic terrain.
The second concerto, which Price wrote in 1952, shortly before her death, begins with jarring chords of D major and F minor, establishing unstable harmonic terrain.
After seeing the mountaineers trek over 20 kilometres each day through the unstable mountainous terrain, Mane saw an opportunity to lighten the load by having his devices to deliver lightweight products, such as a first aid medicine box.
The current healthcare landscape is an unstable and complex terrain.
