Treatise on Geomorphology (V. 1)

This Treatise on Geomorphology was first conceived in order to pull together the hosts of new information on Earth surface processes and results that many of us saw pouring from the many journals, month after month, year after year, with no end in sight. Many of us lacked a straightforward method to distill the deluge of information into the fundamental essences of new insights essential for streamlined utilization. This task becomes more manageable when aided by nearby colleagues and graduate students, or through collaborative efforts, as demonstrated in this Treatise.

The perceived requirement for this Treatise emerged from discussions among many of us due to the scarcity of comprehensive textbooks encompassing the topics featured in our table of contents.In the course of editing the 325 chapters for this Treatise on Geomorphology, I must say that the amount of new knowledge about landforms and the processes that generate them is truly surprising to me, as I have been working in the discipline for a half century and I thought that I was fairly aware of many of the new developments.

Their Development

The development of this Treatise on Geomorphology spanned the last 6 years. Initially, most volume editors convened at the corporate offices in Woodstock, England. Later, they individually gathered at professional meetings, primarily in the USA. Subsequent changes in volume editors were necessitated by pressing issues, leading to the recruitment of new editors to address gaps. An initial endeavor to adopt a nontraditional division of knowledge domains met with limited popularity among the volume editors. As a result, we ultimately decided on the configuration of the 14 topical volumes currently presented.

Thus we have Volume 1: The Foundations of Geomorphology, edited by Drs. Antony R. Orme and Dorthy Sack, which is a new look at some of the historical trends that have developed; Volume 2: Quantitative Modeling of Geomorphology, edited by Dr. Andreas Baas; Volume 3: Remote Sensing and GIScience in Geomorphology, edited by Dr. Michael P. Bishop; Volume 4: Weathering and Soils Geomorphology, edited by Dr. Gregory A. Pope; Volume 5: Tectonic Geomorphology, edited by Dr. Lewis A. Owen; Volume 6: Karst Geomorphology, edited by Dr. Amos Frumkin; Volume 7: Mountain and Hillslope Geomorphology, edited by Drs. Richard A. Marston and Markus Stoffel; Volume 8: Glacial and Periglacial Geomorphology.