The joy of geomorphology

 

A couple of pages from my 1976 Iceland field notebook.  Detective work in progress....... in a wonderfully stimulating discipline.

Geomorphology is the science, and the art, of reading the natural landscape.  That's it.  Nice and simple.  

It needs much more respect from other disciplines -- but of course it is true that most people have never even heard of it.  It's a strong and popular university discipline -- mostly taught in geography departments.  That's because there is a firm spatial component in geomorphology studies.  But it's not very good at promoting itself, and many professional geomorphologists are reluctant to get involved in territory that might be considered as belonging to somebody else.  So when I ask old colleagues why they do not get more involved in the debate about the Stonehenge bluestones, they often say "Oh, I do not know enough about the details of the debate"  or "I do not know the literature well enough to make a meaningful contribution."  I find that very frustrating, because it leaves archaeologists -- and a few geologosts -- in control of the territory which geomorphologists should claim as their own. The question of whetherc salisbury Plain was everc glaciated is a straightforward geomorphological problem.   Science is the loser, as myths proliferate and as pseudo-science is accepted as the truth by a gullible media.......

The only professional geomorphologists who have got stuck into the bluestone debate are Chris Green, Jim Scourse and myself.  We may not agree, but that's OK, because debate is always healthy.  But where are all our other colleagues, who have abundant specialist skills which could be used with great benefit all round?  I still find that there are peoplke who say that ice cannot travel uphill, or that the Irish Sea Ice Stream never travelled from west to east -- and they get away with it.........

I know part of the answer for this apparent lack of involvement or focus.  Many of the serious expert geomorphologists and glaciologists  have been pulled into polar field research which has a bearing on the climate change crisis, and I respect them for that.  But I still think that the subject should be much more aggressive in promoting itself as having real relevance in a wide range of academic debates.  Senior geomorphologists could, and should, be calling out some of the more preposterous suggestions that come from non-specialists about glacier behaviour, the characteristics of glacial deposits and many other matters.

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PS.  When Dave Sugden and I were working from HMS Protector in 1965-66 in the Antarctic,  the ship's newsletter carried this cartoon:

"Well, I mean it's obvious.  A geomorphologist is a bloke wot does a bit o' geomorfin......."