Background

• A history of geomorphology from an American perspective, emphasizing landscape-scale investigations

  • The era of descriptive models of landform evolution-- up to 1960
    • William Morris Davis (cycles)
    • Walther Penck (waxing and waning slopes)
    • John Hack (steady-state landscapes)

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As a bit of background, I will present a brief historical summary of geomorphology from an American perspective. Early geomorphic studies were largely descriptive, and based upon rather rigid concepts of the stages through which landforms evolve, including Davis’s cycles, Penck’s waxing and waning slopes, and Hack’s steady-state landscapes.