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Geomorphology is the science of Earth’s landforms, exploring such diverse questions as how rivers erode sediment, what landforms were like when humans evolved, why rock surfaces have different colors, and where floods and landslides can be avoided. Teaching and research in the interdisciplinary field of geomorphology occurs in college departments of geography, geology, civil engineering, and sometimes archaeology, soils, and hydrology.
Any point on Earth’s surface can go up in elevation, remain in place, or go down in elevation through erosion. Volcanic and tectonic geomorphologists focus on the building of relief through volcanic events, faulting, or folding rocks. Eolian (wind), coastal, and glacial geomorphologists study both the buildup of relief and its erosion. Weathering and soil specialists study the transformation of rocks into smaller fragments and eventually into soils. The decreases in surface resistance to erosion eventually allows the transport of weathered fragments by gravity through mass wasting such as landslides and through water transport called fluvial processes.
The table of contents of most introductory geomorphology textbooks reveals the sorts of topics studied: weathering (rock decay), mass wasting (landslides), fluvial (rivers) processes, groundwater, tectonic (earthquake) landforms, topographic expression of folded strata, topographic expression of joints and faults, landforms developed on igneous rocks, glacial processes, glacial landforms, Quaternary climatic changes and the Ice Ages, periglacial (ground ice) processes and landforms, shorelines, and eolian processes and landforms.
In every field of science, the orientation or perspective of the researchers drives what and how they investigate questions. Geomorphology is no exception. At the start of the 20th century, geomorphologists focused on reconstructing the sequence of past events producing today’s landforms. The 1960s and 1970s started a trend still dominating the field today-of focusing on studying physical, chemical, and biological processes responsible for landform changes. The reconstruction side of geomorphology remains today, exploring such arenas as how to mathematically model landform change or how climatic changes in the last few million to thousand years affected landforms.
The two dominant journals are Earth Surface Processes and Landforms and Geomorphology, although important articles can be found in dozens of other scholarly serials. Geomorphologists typically belong to one or more of the following scholarly organizations: Geomorphology Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers; British Geomorphological Research Group; Hydrology Section of the American Geophysical Union; and Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology Section of the Geological Society of America.
Like many disciplines of knowledge, geomorphologists struggle with trying to make advances in basic knowledge of the science, while also applying existing core knowledge to solve societal and environmental problems. Geomorphologists work on such applied research as understanding the effects of building a dam, why urban growth destroys beaches, the storage of toxic chemicals in river sediments, or how environmental changes can exacerbate landslides on top of houses.
Bibliography:
- S. Goudie, Encyclopedia of Geomorphology, Vols. 1 and 2 (Routledge, 2004);
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