Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  1. Home
  2. Browse subjects
  3. Geography
  4. Physical geography
  5. Content listing

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

368 results in Physical geography

Page 8 of 19

  • Preface

  • Robert S. Anderson, University of Colorado, Boulder, Suzanne P. Anderson, University of Colorado, Boulder
  • Book:
    Geomorphology
    Published online:
    05 August 2012
    Print publication:
    17 June 2010, pp xi-xiv

  • Summary

    Geomorphology is the study of the shape of the Earth. In this book we take this quite literally, and address the shape of the Earth at many scales. We ask why it is spherical, or not quite spherical, why it has a distribution of elevations that is bimodal, one mode characterizing a quite well-organized set of ocean basins, another the terrestrial landscape. At smaller scales, we address why hilltops are convex, why glacial troughs are U-shaped, why rivers are concave up. At yet smaller scales, sand is rippled, beaches are cusped, hillslopes are striped, and mud is cracked. These are some of nature's most remarkable and visible examples of self-organizing systems. Each cries out for both explanation and appreciation.

    Goals

    We wrote this textbook to provide modern teachers and students of geomorphology with a formal treatment of geomorphic processes that acknowledges the blossoming of this field within the last two decades. It brings together between two covers the background that serves to attach our field with those of geophysics, atmospheric sciences, geochemistry, and geochronology. It honors the heightened importance of geomorphology in understanding the environment and its changes, with an attendant need to pose these problems more formally.

    The book is intended to be used in an introductory geomorphology course in which the attention is more on the processes that shape landscapes than on the cataloging of landforms. Most likely such a course will fit into a third and fourth year undergraduate or an introductory graduate curriculum.

Page 8 of 19