Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-87812-8 - Geomorphology and Global Environmental Change Edited by Olav Slaymaker, Thomas Spencer and Christine Embleton-Hamann Frontmatter More information Geomorphology and Global Environmental Change How will global environmental change affect our landscape and Columbia. He is a Former President of the Canadian Association the way we interact with it? The next 50 years will determine the of Geographers and the International Association of future of the environment in which we live, whether catastrophe or Geomorphologists, and a Linton Medallist. He has held visiting reorganisation. Global climate change will potentially have a professorships at the universities of Vienna, Canterbury, Oslo, profound effect on our landscape, but there are other important Southern Illinois, Taiwan, and Nanjing. He has authored 120 drivers of landscape change, including relief, hydroclimate and refereed journal articles and authored and edited 20 books. He is a runoff, sea level change and human activity. This volume Co-Editor-in-Chief of Catena and member of nine international summarises the state of the art concerning the landscape-scale editorial boards. geomorphic implications of global environmental change. It analyses the potential effects of environmental change on a THOMAS SPENCER is University Senior Lecturer in the range of landscapes, including mountains, lakes, rivers, coasts, Department of Geography, Director of the Cambridge Coastal reefs, rainforests, savannas, deserts, permafrost, and ice sheets and Research Unit, University of Cambridge, and Official Fellow, ice caps. Magdalene College, Cambridge. His research interests in wetland Geomorphology and Global Environmental Change provides a hydrodynamics and sedimentation, coral reef geomorphology, sea benchmark statement from some of the world’s leading level rise and coastal management have taken him to the Caribbean geomorphologists on the state of the environment and its likely Sea, the Pacific and Indian oceans, Venice and its lagoon and the near-future change. It is invaluable as required reading in graduate coastline of eastern England. He has authored and co-edited advanced courses on geomorphology and environmental science, numerous books on coastal problems, environmental challenges and as a reference for research scientists. It is highly and global environmental change. interdisciplinary in scope, with a primary audience of earth and environmental scientists, geographers, geomorphologists and CHRISTINE EMBLETON-HAMANN is a Professor in the ecologists, both practitioners and professionals. It will also have a Department of Geography and Regional Research at the University of wider reach to those concerned with the social, economic and Vienna. Her main interest is in alpine environments. Within this field political issues raised by global environmental change and be of she focusses on the history of ideas concerning the evolution of alpine value to policy-makers and environmental managers. environments, genesis and development of specific landforms and human impact on alpine environments, and has written extensively on OLAV SLAYMAKER is Professor Emeritus in the Department of geomorphological hazards and risks and the assessment of scenic Geography, University of British Columbia. He is a Senior quality of alpine landscapes. She is Past President of the Austrian Associate of the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies and Commission on Geomorphology and Secretary-General of the Senior Fellow of St John’s College, University of British International Association of Geomorphologists Working Group. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-87812-8 - Geomorphology and Global Environmental Change Edited by Olav Slaymaker, Thomas Spencer and Christine Embleton-Hamann Frontmatter More information Praise for Geomorphology and Global Environmental Change: ‘Global change, whether due to global warming or other human ‘According to the World Resources Institute, 21 metric tons of impacts, is one of the great issues of the day. In this volume some of material, including materials not actually used in production (soil the world’s most distinguished geomorphologists give an expert erosion, over-burden, construction debris, etc.) are processed and and wide-ranging analysis of its significance for the movement.’ discharged as waste every year to provide the average Japanese ANDREW GOUDIE,University of Oxford and President of with goods and services. The figure for the US is an astonishing the International Association of Geomorphologists 86 tonnes per capita. The OECD says that in 2002, 50 billion tonnes of resources were extracted from the ecosphere to satisfy ‘Geomorphology and Global Environmental Change, with human needs and the number is headed toward 80 billion tonnes chapters by a truly global group of distinguished per year by 2020. Most of this is associated with consumption by geomorphologists, redresses the imbalance that has seen an just the richest 20% of humanity who take home 76% of global overemphasis on climate as the prime driver of landscape change. income, so the human role in global mass movement and landscape This comprehensive book summarises the deepening complexity alteration may only be beginning. These data show unequivocally of multiple drivers of change, recognising the role that relief plays that the human enterprise in an integral and growing component of in influencing hydrological processes, that sea level exerts on the ecosphere and one of the greatest geological forces affecting coastal environments, and the far-reaching impacts of human the face of the earth. Remarkably, however, techno-industrial activity in all the major biomes, in addition to climate. The lags and society still thinks of itself as separate from “the environment”. thresholds, the changing supply to the sediment cascade, and the Certainly geomorphologists have historically considered human influence of fire on vegetation ensure that uncertain near-future activities as external to geosystems. This is about to change. In process regimes will result in unforeseen landscape responses. The Geomorphology and Global Environmental Change, Slaymaker, potential collapse and reorganisation of landscapes provide fertile Spencer and Embleton-Hamann provide a comprehensive research fields for a new generation of geomorphologists and this treatment of landscape degradation in geosystems ranging from book provides an authoritative synthesis of where we are today and coral reefs to icecaps that considers humans as a major endogenous a basis for embarking on a more risk-based effort to forecast how forcing mechanism. This long-overdue integration of the landforms around us are likely to change in the future.’ geomorphology and human ecology greatly enriches the global COLON D. WOODROFFE, University of Wollongong change debate. It should be a primary reference for all serious students of contemporary geomorphology and the full range of ‘A robust future for geomorphology will inevitably have to be environmental sciences.’ founded on greater consideration of human impacts on the WILLIAM E. REES, University of British Columbia; landscape. An intellectual framework for this will necessarily have co-author of Our Ecological Footprint; Founding Fellow of the environmental change as a central component. This volume One Earth Initiative represents an important starting point. Coverage is comprehensive, and a set of authoritative voices provide individual chapters serving as both benchmarks and signposts for critical disciplinary topics.’ COLIN E. THORN, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-87812-8 - Geomorphology and Global Environmental Change Edited by Olav Slaymaker, Thomas Spencer and Christine Embleton-Hamann Frontmatter More information Geomorphology and Global Environmental Change EDITED BY Olav Slaymaker The University of British Columbia Thomas Spencer University of Cambridge Christine Embleton-Hamann Universität Wien © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-87812-8 - Geomorphology and Global Environmental Change Edited by Olav Slaymaker, Thomas Spencer and Christine Embleton-Hamann Frontmatter More information CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521878128 © Cambridge University Press 2009 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2009 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library ISBN 978-0-521-87812-8 hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge