Landscape Evolution
Landforms, Ecosystems, and Soils
- 1st Edition - April 30, 2021
- Imprint: Elsevier
- Author: Jonathan D. Phillips
- Language: English
- Paperback ISBN:9 7 8 - 0 - 1 2 - 8 2 1 7 2 5 - 2
- eBook ISBN:9 7 8 - 0 - 1 2 - 8 2 3 2 4 9 - 1
Landscape Evolution: Landforms, Ecosystems and Soils asks us to think holistically, to look for the interactions between the Earth’s component surface systems, to consider how un… Read more
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Request a sales quoteLandscape Evolution: Landforms, Ecosystems and Soils asks us to think holistically, to look for the interactions between the Earth’s component surface systems, to consider how universal laws and historical and geographical contingency work together, and to ponder the implications of nonlinear dynamics in landscapes, ecosystems, and soils. Development, evolution, landforms, topography, soils, ecosystems, and hydrological systems are inextricably intertwined. While empirical studies increasingly incorporate these interactions, theories and conceptual frameworks addressing landforms, soils, and ecosystems are pursued largely independently. This is partly due to different academic disciplines, traditions, and lexicons involved, and partly due to the disparate time scales sometimes encountered. Landscape Evolution explicitly synthesizes and integrates these theories and threads of inquiry, arguing that all are guided by a general principle of efficiency selection. A key theme is that evolutionary trends are probabilistic, emergent outcomes of efficiency selection rather than purported goal functions. This interdisciplinary reference will be useful for academic and research scientists across the Earth sciences.
- Serves as a primary theoretical resource on landscape evolution, Earth surface system development, and environmental responses to climate and land use change
- Incorporates key ideas on geomorphic, soil, hydrologic, and ecosystem evolution and responses in a single book
- Includes case studies to provide real-world examples of evolving landscapes
Academic and research scientists across the Earth sciences.Environmental restoration and rehabilitation professionals; natural resource and land management professionals; academia in geography, biology, and environmental science.
- Cover image
- Title page
- Table of Contents
- Copyright
- Preface
- 1. An integrated approach to landscape evolution
- Introduction
- Key concepts
- Background: evolutionary pathways in landscapes
- Comparison and contrast: integrated approach to landscape evolution versus traditional approaches
- 2. Earth surface systems as supraorganisms
- Introduction: supraorganisms
- State factor model
- Ecosystem evolution
- The upshot
- 3. Observing landscape evolution
- Introduction
- Methods and approaches
- Indicators
- 4. It depends on the scale: scale contingency in landscape evolution
- Overview of scale issues
- Scale (in)dependence
- Hierarchies and the vanishing point
- Time—real and realized
- Scale contingency
- 5. Historical contingency in landscape evolution
- Memory, inheritance, and legacies
- Succession and state transitions
- Canalization
- Extinction and reinforcement of evolutionary pathways
- Maturation
- Divergence and convergence
- Evolutionary pathways and historical trajectories
- Summary
- 6. Attractors and goal functions in landscape evolution
- Introduction
- Deterministic, single-outcome systems
- Multiple path, multiple outcome concepts
- Plasticity, degrees of freedom, and constraints
- Goal functions and emergence
- Multiple causality
- Circular reasoning
- Consilience?
- 7. Thresholds, tipping points, and instability
- Introduction
- Thresholds in the landscape sciences
- Lessons from the past
- Mode switches and meta-thresholds
- Example: a hierarchy of thresholds
- Conclusions
- 8. Selection and landscape evolution
- Introduction
- Ecosystem selection
- Abiotic selection
- Preferential flow
- Efficiency selection
- Selection is local
- Why aren't landscapes always becoming more efficient?
- Occam's selection
- Example: Inner Bluegrass, Kentucky
- 9. The perfect landscape
- The perfect storm
- The perfect landscape
- Triangles, badasses, and axioms
- Evolutionary creativity
- Evolution of landscape diversity
- Conclusions
- 10. Landscape evolution and environmental change
- Landscape evolution lessons
- Transformational, reciprocal, emergent evolution: TREE
- A churning urn of burning funk
- Landscape evolution stories
- Lower Sabine River
- Trees and surface drainage in the Šumava Mountains
- The last word
- Index
- Edition: 1
- Published: April 30, 2021
- Imprint: Elsevier
- No. of pages: 356
- Language: English
- Paperback ISBN: 9780128217252
- eBook ISBN: 9780128232491
JP
Jonathan D. Phillips
Jonathan Phillips is Professor of Earth Surface Systems and University Research Professor in the Department of Geography, University of Kentucky and an affiliate of the "Blue Cats" research team in the Forest Ecology unit of the Sylva Tarouc Institute, Brno, Czech Republic. He previously held faculty positions at East Carolina, Texas A&M, and Arizona State Universities. Phillips has been recognized with distinguished career awards from both the British Society for Geomorphology (Linton Medal) and the Geomorphology Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers (Marcus Award), as well as several other research awards. He is author of more than 200 refereed research publications across the fields of geomorphology, pedology, hydrology, ecology, environmental science, and quantitative geography.
Affiliations and expertise
Professor of Earth Surface Systems and University Research Professor, Department of Geography, University of Kentucky, USARead Landscape Evolution on ScienceDirect