About this book
How will global environmental change affect the landscape and our interaction with it? Apart from climate change, there are other important catalysts of landscape change, including relief, hydroclimate and runoff, sea level variations and human activity. This volume summarises the state-of-the-art concerning the geomorphic implications of global environmental change, analysing such effects on lakes, rivers, coasts, reefs, rainforests, savannas, deserts, glacial features, and mountains.
Providing a benchmark statement from the world's leading geomorphologists on the current state of, and potential changes to, the environment, this book is invaluable for advanced courses on geomorphology and environmental science, and as a reference for research scientists. Interdisciplinary in scope, with a primary audience of Earth and environmental scientists, geographers, geomorphologists and ecologists, it also has a wider reach to those concerned with the social, economic and political issues raised by global environmental change, and is useful to policy makers and environmental managers.
Contents
Preface
1. Landscape, and landscape scale processes as the unfilled niche in the global environmental change debate: an introduction
2. Mountains
3. Lakes and lake catchments
4. Rivers
5. Estuaries, coastal marshes, tidal flats and coastal dunes
6. Beaches, cliffs and deltas
7. Coral reefs
8. Tropical rainforests
9. Tropical savannas
10. Deserts
11. Mediterranean
12. Temperate forests and rangelands
13. Tundra and permafrost dominated taiga
14. Ice sheets and ice caps
15. Landscape, landscape scale processes and global environmental change: synthesis and new agendas for the twenty-first century
Index
Customer Reviews
Biography
Olav Slaymaker is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Geography, University of British Columbia. He is a Senior Associate of the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies and Senior Fellow of St. John's College, University of British Columbia. He is a Former President of the Canadian Association of Geomorphologists and the International Association of Geomorphologists, and a Linton Medallist. He has held visiting professorships at the universities of Vienna, Canterbury, Oslo, Southern Illinois, Taiwan, and Nanjing. He has authored 120 refereed journal articles and 20 books on mountain environments, mountain geomorphology, the cryosphere and global environmental change. He is a Co-Editor in Chief of Catena and a member of nine international editorial boards.
Tom Spencer is University Senior Lecturer in the Department of Geography, Director of the Cambridge Coastal Research Unit and Official Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge University. His research interests in wetland hydrodynamics and sedimentation, coral reef geomorphology, sea level rise and coastal management have taken him to the Caribbean Sea, the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and Venice and its lagoon and the coastline of eastern England. He has authored and co-edited numerous books on coastal problems, environmental challenges and global environmental change.
Christine Embleton-Hamann is a Professor in the Department of Geography and Regional Research at the University of Vienna. Her main interest is in alpine environments. Within this field she focuses on the history of ideas concerning the evolution of alpine environments, genesis and development of specific landforms, human impact on alpine environments, geomorphological hazards and risks and the assessment of scenic quality of alpine landscapes. She is past-president of the Austrian Commission on Geomorphology and Secretary-General of the International Association of Geomorphologists Working Group.
