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20 results

Geomorphology in the Anthropocene
  • Andrew S. Goudie, Heather A. Viles
  • Published online:
    20 October 2016
    Print publication:
    10 October 2016
  • The Anthropocene is a major new concept in the Earth sciences and this book examines the effects on geomorphology within this period. Drawing examples from many different global environments, this comprehensive volume demonstrates that human impact on landforms and land-forming processes is profound, due to various driving forces, including: use of fire; extinction of fauna; development of agriculture, urbanisation, and globalisation; and new methods of harnessing energy. The book explores the ways in which future climate change due to anthropogenic causes may further magnify effects on geomorphology, with respect to future hazards such as floods and landslides, the state of the cryosphere, and sea level. The book concludes with a consideration of the ways in which landforms are now being managed and protected. Covering all major aspects of geomorphology, this book is ideal for undergraduate and graduate students studying geomorphology, environmental science and physical geography, and for all researchers of geomorphology.

  • 8 - Aeolian Processes and Forms in the Anthropocene

  • Andrew S. Goudie, University of Oxford, Heather A. Viles, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    Geomorphology in the Anthropocene
    Published online:
    20 October 2016
    Print publication:
    10 October 2016, pp 179-192

  • Summary

    The study of aeolian dust in deep sea and ice core sediments, the analysis of long term meteorological data, the recording of trajectories of dust storms on satellite images, the development of new forms of dust trap, the recognition of dust activity on Mars, and the use of field wind tunnels, caused a huge expansion of interest in atmospheric dust in the 1970s and 1980s. Dust storms, which result from the entrainment of fine particles from deflated surfaces, especially in dry regions, are one indicator of soil erosion by wind. Various human pressures influence their incidence, including disturbance of desert surfaces. In many parts of the world there is evidence that dust storm frequencies are changing in response to land use and climatic changes, though it has often proved difficult to disentangle the importance of these two main factors. The USA Dustbowl of the 1930s demonstrates the serious nature of some past aeolian episodes. It remains to be established, however, whether analysis of meteorological data indicates whether or not increasing dust storm frequencies are the norm. Some areas have indeed shown increasing trends, while others have shown declining trends. Humans have developed techniques for wind erosion and dust storm control, most of them designed to protect cultivated fields from soil loss. Sand dunes have been reactivated on many desert margins by human activities, as have coastal dunes. Methods have been developed for dune and sand movement management. Future climatic change may be important for dust storm activity. If soil moisture declines as a result of changes in precipitation and/or temperature, there is the possibility that dust storm activity could increase in a warmer world. Sand dunes, because of the crucial relationships between vegetation cover and sand movement, have in the past proved susceptible to changes of climate and may thus change in the future. Coastal dunes will be impacted upon by future sea-level changes.

  • 9 - Coastal Processes and Forms in the Anthropocene

  • Andrew S. Goudie, University of Oxford, Heather A. Viles, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    Geomorphology in the Anthropocene
    Published online:
    20 October 2016
    Print publication:
    10 October 2016, pp 193-222

  • Summary

    Because settlements, industries, transport facilities and recreational developments are so concentrated on coasts, the pressures placed on coastal landforms are often acute. While most areas are subject to some degree of natural erosion and accretion, the balance can be upset by human activity in a whole range of different ways. Many soft coastlines in the world are actively eroding at the present time. Many deltas have been formed or have grown considerably in the wake of human interventions that liberated large amounts of sediments in their catchments. However, where sediment loads are reduced through the construction of large reservoirs and sediment accumulation within them, delta erosion may result. Coral reefs are another coastal landform type that is undergoing profound change at the present time in response to a number of stressors. Estuaries have also been subjected to a range of human influences. Many salt marshes have been much modified by human actions, including draining and ditching. In the future, rising sea levels, will occur. These will impact upon low-lying shorelines, including islands, wetlands, mangrove swamps, muddy coasts, coral reefs, lagoons, deltas, barrier islands and beaches. In addition, phenomena like storm surges may increase if hurricane activity becomes more severe. Coral reefs face a suite of potential threats from climate change, ocean acidification and sea level rise.

  • 7 - Fluvial Processes and Forms in the Anthropocene

  • Andrew S. Goudie, University of Oxford, Heather A. Viles, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    Geomorphology in the Anthropocene
    Published online:
    20 October 2016
    Print publication:
    10 October 2016, pp 130-178

  • Summary

    Humans have deliberately altered fluvial landscapes, by the building of embankments and levees, the construction of dams and reservoirs, and channelization. Fluvial sediment transport has been modified in two main ways. On the one hand, dam construction has caused much sediment to be trapped in reservoirs. On the other, sediment delivery to rivers has been increased as a result of accelerated rates of soil erosion. Humans have greatly modified channels, though it is not always easy to differentiate between human effects and those of climatic fluctuations and flood events. Much channel change is the inadvertent result of modification of the amounts of water and sediment that come down channels, or the modification of riparian vegetation. River restoration describes a set of activities that help improve the environmental health of rivers and which have an impact on river channels. It has become an important approach to river management since the 1980s. Related to stream restoration and to the developing aversion to hard engineering, is dam removal. In recent years, partly because some old dams have become unsafe, ecologically unacceptable, or redundant, they have been demolished. Floodplain sediments have been generated by human activities in the Holocene. The causes of phases of incision and aggradation are illustrated from three regions: the arroyos of the south west United States, aggradation and erosion in valley bottom of the Mediterranean lands, and the spectacular gullies, lavaka, in Madagascar. Global warming will affect fluvial geomorphology in a range of ways. Increasing temperatures will melt snow and ice and promote greater losses of moisture through evapotranspiration. There will be changes in the amount, intensity, duration and timing of precipitation, which will also affect the size of snowpacks and river flows. Vegetation cover will respond to temperature and precipitation changes, as will land use. Vegetation assemblages will also be affected by an increasing frequency of fires and this may also affect runoff.

  • 4 - Subsidence in the Anthropocene

  • Andrew S. Goudie, University of Oxford, Heather A. Viles, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    Geomorphology in the Anthropocene
    Published online:
    20 October 2016
    Print publication:
    10 October 2016, pp 57-70

  • Summary

    Humans cause ground subsidence by dewatering of karstic formations, mining of coal and salt, groundwater and geothermal fluid abstraction, exploitation of hydrocarbon resources, the draining of organic soils, hydrocompaction, and the disruption of permafrost. Various human activities can sometimes cause seismic activity in areas where it is naturally rare. These include loading of the crust by reservoirs, fluid abstraction and injection, underground waste disposal, hydro-fracturing (fracking), carbon sequestration, mining, tunnel construction, and exploitation of geothermal resources.

  • 11 - Conclusions on the Relationships Between Geomorphology and the Anthropocene

  • Andrew S. Goudie, University of Oxford, Heather A. Viles, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    Geomorphology in the Anthropocene
    Published online:
    20 October 2016
    Print publication:
    10 October 2016, pp 234-250

  • Summary

    The key geomorphological changes produced as a result of human activities are re-iterated, and the antiquity of some changes is summarised. In coming decades, combinations of land use change and anthropogenic climate change will cause still further alterations in the geomorphological environment. With regards to climate change, some environments will change more than others – ‘geomorphological hotspots’ - especially when crucial thresholds are crossed. Global warming is not the only big global issue that we face in the future. Also of immense and in many cases more immediate importance are other aspects of global change, particularly those brought about my modifications of land use and land cover. Humans are not merely passive observers of geomorphological change. There is now a huge array of techniques to control, for instance, wind erosion and dune movement, water erosion of soils, landslides, and coastal retreat, while fluvial systems are being restored and dams removed. Moreover, the world’s network of protected areas has grown steadily since the latter part of the nineteenth century and particularly since the early 1960s. World Heritage Sites, Geoparks, Geosites and National Parks have been established. Finally, it is becoming increasingly apparent that comprehension of the role of geomorphological change in altering the Earth System is a major research priority.

  • 6 - Hillslope Processes in the Anthropocene

  • Andrew S. Goudie, University of Oxford, Heather A. Viles, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    Geomorphology in the Anthropocene
    Published online:
    20 October 2016
    Print publication:
    10 October 2016, pp 87-129

  • Summary

    Soil erosion is a major aspect of the human role in modifying the face of the Earth. Much surface erosion is caused by surface runoff. This in turn is often controlled by the infiltration capacities of surface materials. These can be affected by land cover and land use, such as the introduction of grazing by domestic stock, the replacement of grassland with shrubland, and deforestation. In addition, there are other structural properties of soils that affect their erodibility, including the nature of their aggregates and their humus contents. Soil compaction by agricultural activities reduces the rate of water infiltration into the soil, which may change the soil moisture status and accelerate surface runoff and soil erosion. The equivalent of many decades of natural erosion may take place during a single year in areas cleared for construction. The presence of roads also increases sediment yield, especially in tropical areas with intense rainfall. Because fires remove vegetation and expose the ground they too tend to increase rates of erosion. There is some evidence that irrigation can lead to soil erosion. Soil erosion has a long history in the Mediterranean lands, but rates are currently changing due to land abandonment and to the establishment of olives and other orchards. Numerous techniques have been applied to try and reduce the amount of sediment that is moved, and for the study of soil erosion rates, some of them relating to short time scales and small spatial scales (e.g. plot studies), some of them to medium spatial and temporal scales (e.g. reservoir sedimentation data), but others taking a longer or larger perspective (e.g. sediment accumulation in lakes). There are many examples of humans accelerating mass movements by vegetation removal, loading of debris onto slopes, changing groundwater conditions, excavating the bases of slopes, and cutting away the toes of debris flows. Under increased greenhouse gas concentrations some GCMs exhibit enhanced global precipitation intensity. This could accelerate erosion. Likewise, fire activity may increase in a warmer and drier environment and this could cause greater erosion and debris flow generation. Geomorphologists have started to model changes in soil erosion and mass movements that may occur as a consequence of changes in rainfall amounts and intensity, glacial retreat, and the melting of permafrost.

  • 3 - Construction and Excavation

  • Andrew S. Goudie, University of Oxford, Heather A. Viles, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    Geomorphology in the Anthropocene
    Published online:
    20 October 2016
    Print publication:
    10 October 2016, pp 31-56

  • Summary

    Humans move large amounts of material which they either excavate or deposit to create artificial landforms. The amount of material moved is rather greater than that moved by the world’s rivers to the oceans. The process of constructing embankments, mounds, and the reclamation of land from the sea is longstanding. In the Middle East and other areas of long-continued human urban settlement the accumulated debris of life has gradually raised the level of the land surface and produced occupation mounds (tells). A major way of making new land is to create artificial islands and artificial reefs. Deliberate coastal reclamation to produce more available productive land also has a long history. Hillsides, valley floors and stream channels have been terraced in many parts of the world for many centuries. Embankments have been constructed along many rivers, very often for flood protection. Waste material excavated from mines is often dumped as spoil heaps at the ground surface. Landforms produced by excavation are widespread. One of the most important causes of excavation is mineral extraction producing open-pit mines, strip mines, quarries for structural materials, borrow pits along roads, and similar features. Other features result from war, especially craters caused by bombs, shell impact or mining. Qanat are underground, gently sloping tunnel wells dug backwards into dryland alluvial fans until the water table is pierced. Canals are artificial rivers that are used for irrigation, drainage, and for transport and travel. The sum total of these direct human impacts on the Earth’s surface are considerable.

  • 10 - Cryospheric Processes and Forms in the Anthropocene

  • Andrew S. Goudie, University of Oxford, Heather A. Viles, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    Geomorphology in the Anthropocene
    Published online:
    20 October 2016
    Print publication:
    10 October 2016, pp 223-233

  • Summary

    Human activity has already had a large impact on many permafrost areas through the creation of thermokarst. Although humans have as yet had little direct influence on the state of glaciers, ice shelves and ice sheets, the situation will change in the future as a consequence of global warming. Three main consequences of warming may be discerned for ice sheets: ice temperature rise and attendant ice flow changes; enhanced basal melting beneath ice shelves and related dynamical response; and changes in mass balance. The state of Greenland and Antarctica is discussed. Many of the world’s valley glaciers have retreated as a consequence of the climatic changes, especially warming, that have occurred in the last hundred or so years since the ending of ‘The Little Ice Age’. Glaciers that calve into water can show especially fast rates of retreat, with rates greater than 1 km per year being possible. Globally the average annual mass loss of glaciers during the warming decade from 1996 to 2005 was twice that of the previous decade (1986-1995) and over four times that of the decade from 1976-1985. Many mountainous areas are predicted to see the disappearance, thinning or retreat of glaciers in coming decades.

  • 1 - Introduction to the Anthropocene and Anthropogeomorphology

  • Andrew S. Goudie, University of Oxford, Heather A. Viles, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    Geomorphology in the Anthropocene
    Published online:
    20 October 2016
    Print publication:
    10 October 2016, pp 1-14

  • Summary

    Humans have modified landforms and the processes which formed them during the Anthropocene. It is apparent that in coming centuries a combination of population increases, land cover changes, climatic changes, and new technologies will increase this force still further. One of the great debates surrounding the Anthropocene is when it started and whether it should be regarded as a formal stratigraphic unit with the same rank as the Holocene. Geomorphological change is an important component of the Anthropocene, though its effects will have varied greatly in space and time and it is often neglected in accounts of human impacts on the Earth system. Humans will continue to modify their environment in coming decades. New technologies will be developed and applied and increasing human population levels will lead to further changes in land cover and in the exploitation of natural resources. Anthropogeomorphology, or the study of humans’ role in shaping landforms and influencing geomorphic processes, is a long-established field of research. Human impacts can be direct and deliberate, but are often inadvertent and indirect. Anthropogeomorphological research provides important evidence of how humans are creating the Anthropocene. There is a two way relationship between geomorphology and the Anthropocene.

  • 2 - Drivers of Anthropogeomorphological Change

  • Andrew S. Goudie, University of Oxford, Heather A. Viles, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    Geomorphology in the Anthropocene
    Published online:
    20 October 2016
    Print publication:
    10 October 2016, pp 15-30

  • Summary

    Homo has lived on Earth for several millions of years and has gradually spread outwards from Africa. The geomorphological impact of humans has changed greatly over time in response to their global distribution, numbers, and adoptions of new technologies. At an early stage in their history humans started the use of fire. Early humans also used stone tools, and in producing them undertook quarrying and splitting of rock outcrops and boulders. Another important early human impact was a spasm of animal extinction, often called ‘Pleistocene Overkill’. The spread of domestication and agriculture transformed land cover at a global scale, and the deliberate removal of forest, whether by fire or cutting, is one of the most longstanding and significant ways in which humans have modified the environment. One highly important development in agriculture, because of its rapid and early effects on environment, was irrigation and the adoption of riverine agriculture. The Secondary Products Revolution occurred in the Old World in the Mid-Holocene and saw, for example, the use of animal-drawn ploughs. Although modest communal settlements may have occurred before the adoption of domestication, it was within a few thousand years of the initiation of cereal agriculture, that people began to gather into cities. The mining of ores and the smelting of metals was one further development in human cultural and technological life which was to increase human power. The perfecting of sea-going ships in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries led to globalization, while the invention of the steam engine in the late eighteenth century, and of the internal combustion engine and high energy explosives in the late nineteenth century, massively increased human access to energy and lessened dependence on animals, wind and water. The burning of fossil fuels is the major driver of anthropogenic climatic changes and it is since the industrial revolution that the concentrations of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane have risen so sharply and inexorably. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution three hundred years ago, a great acceleration in human impacts on geomorphology has occurred.

  • 5 - Weathering Processes in the Anthropocene

  • Andrew S. Goudie, University of Oxford, Heather A. Viles, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    Geomorphology in the Anthropocene
    Published online:
    20 October 2016
    Print publication:
    10 October 2016, pp 71-86

  • Summary

    Human activities have changed the nature and rate of weathering, although quantitative assessments are scarce and complexities great. Weathering is highly influenced by climatic, biological and erosional processes. Over the palaeoanthropocene, there is evidence from various parts of the world that changes in agriculture and settlement led to changes in chemical weathering. During the Industrial Era, human impacts on air quality, soil quality (salinization) and deforestation have had demonstrable impacts on weathering across large areas. One of the prime causes of increasing rates of weathering during this period has been air pollution. As a result of increased emissions of sulphur dioxide through the burning of fossil fuels, there are higher levels of sulphuric acid in precipitation over many industrial areas. Besides accelerating decay, chemical reactions involving sulphur dioxide can also generate salts such as calcium sulphate and magnesium sulphate, which may be effective in causing salt weathering and the formation of crusts on exposed surfaces. Salt weathering can also be accelerated by changes in groundwater levels resulting from such mechanisms as irrigation, vegetation clearance and urbanisation. There are records from many parts of the tropics of accelerated induration of lateritic mantles brought about by forest removal. Within the Great Acceleration concerns have grown over the impacts of global change (increased atmospheric CO2 levels and temperatures, changing precipitation) on chemical weathering of silicate and carbonate rocks, and on building stone deterioration. In the future changes in CO2, temperatures and precipitation will exert a strong influence on weathering, coupled with, and complicated by, changes in land use. Proposals have also been made to use enhanced terrestrial weathering as a form of geoengineering to combat future climate change.

  • 12 - Weathering hazards

  • Edited by Irasema Alcántara-Ayala, Andrew S. Goudie, St Cross College, Oxford
  • Book:
    Geomorphological Hazards and Disaster Prevention
    Published online:
    10 January 2011
    Print publication:
    04 March 2010, pp 145-160

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Like many geomorphological processes, weathering can pose a hazard if it affects humans, their property and livelihoods. Unlike many geomorphological processes that are known to cause a hazard, such as landslides, avalanches and coastal erosion, weathering is generally slow and small scale, though once thresholds have been breached or humans have accelerated the processes involved, weathering can have dramatic results (such as the rapid, catastrophic weathering of limestone facades recognised by Smith and Viles,2006). The slow rate and small-scale nature of weathering means that it is often overlooked in hazard research, but it can have serious economic effects as well as being capable of irreparably damaging items of our cultural heritage. For example, relatively minor (in geomorphological terms) rates of weathering can disfigure valuable carving and statuary or induce fragments of stonework to fall from a facade, which are capable of causing injury or death. It can also contribute to more catastrophic events such as rockfalls (Figure 12.1) and rockslides (Matsuoka and Sakai, 1999; Jaboyedoff et al., 2004; Borrelli et al., 2007) and promote landslides in deeply weathered materials (Durgin, 1977) and in clays (Gullà et al., 2006). Chemical weathering may also pose hazards to human health by liberating toxic chemicals (e.g. excessive amounts of arsenic, fluoride, heavy metals etc. from bedrock and mine waste) (Islam et al., 2000; Saxena and Ahmed, 2001; Dang et al., 2002).