The Changing Earth: Rates of Geomorphological Processes (The Natural Environment)

Discovering the rates at which landscapes change and the causes of these changes is a key current focus in environmental, ecological, geoscientific and archaeological research. The mechanisms are intricate involving many components - a complex of positive and negative feedback mechanisms, and scales varying from the solar system to global tectonics to the activities of microscopic organisms. In this book, Andrew Goudies draws together the findings of many disparate disciplines (and of his own research) to present a structured account of what is known, and what remains to be discovered, about change and the variable rate of change in the shape and environment of the earth's surface. This is not a research monograph, but a research synthesis presented in terms comprehensible to workers in a wide range of disciplines. The major parts of the book deal with weathering, fluvial processes, slope processes, wind-induced processes, glacial and ice-cap processes, coastal processes and global tectonics. In each case the author stresses the complex links between the processes operating at particular times and places, and examines their impact at different scales of space and time. He also points to the long- and short-term effects of the human impact.