Overview

If it is to present its subject matter coherently a textbook must have a point of view. The perspective of this book is that an adequate appreciation of landform genesis must encompass a knowledge of the large-scale framework of landscapes as well as an understanding of the smaller-scale processes which create individual landforms. An emphasis on small-scale surface processes and their associated landforms has been pervasive in geomorphology since the 1960s, to the point where the larger- scale aspects of landform genesis, and in particular the role of internal mechanisms in influencing the development of major morphological features, have come to be regarded as almost incidental to the main thrust of research in the subject. There are growing signs that this situation is changing (not that it ever fully existed amongst some communities of geomorphologists, such as those in Australia) and this book attempts to redress the balance by giving due weight to problems of long-term, large-scale landscape development. In particular the author has attempted to integrate ideas on global tectonics fully into lansdcape analysis and to incorporate the results of newly applied dating techniques and of research on the offshore sedimentary record. The examination of surface processes and the landforms they create still account for the bulk of the text but the title of the book is intended to convey the global perspective that the author wishes to present. Geomorphology has grown in scope and depth over the recent past to the extent that even in a fairly lengthy text the author has been forced to be selective in the topics he has discussed. The major omission in terms of this book as a general text is applied geomorphology, but to have done this topic justice would have extended the length of the book . The addition of an applied dimension would also have detracted from the global approach of the book. The author decided that the examination of planetary landscapes and the startling perspective it provides of the surface of our own planet was a more important topic given the global theme. A second important topic the author has omitted is submarine geomorphology; this again is largely for reasons of space since the history of the ocean basins and the operation of submarine processes raise some quite distinct issues which the author felt could not be adequately addressed within the compass of additional chapters.

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Michael A Summerfield

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