Key Concepts in Geomorphology

Description

Developed with extensive community involvement and support from the US National Science Foundation, this textbook is about our planet's dynamic surface, a place where Earth and atmosphere meet and life thrives. Key Concepts in Geomorphology takes an integrative science approach that applies principles of physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics in the understanding of Earth surface processes and the evolution of topography over short and long timescales to solve problems important to people and societies. The authors also hone in on practical applications, showing how scientists are using geomorphological research to tackle critical societal issues (natural disaster response, safer infrastructure, protecting species, and more).

Paul Bierman has been a professor of Geology and Natural Resources at the University of Vermont since 1993. His research and teaching expertise focus on the interaction of people and Earths dynamic surface. Bierman's research has taken him around the globe. He has studied erosion in Australia, South America, and several countries in Africa and the Middle East. In Greenland, Bierman and his graduate students are tracing the history of the Greenland Ice sheet over the last million years, an adventure that repeatedly takes them helicoptering over the ice. In Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York, Bierman and his students created the first record of storminess and erosion that extended back over the last 10,000 years how many of the past megastorms they identified were hurricanes?Bierman works extensively communicating science to the pubic. He teaches summer science programs for highly motivated high school students, directs a public web site (www.uvm.edu/landscape) holding over 70,000 photographs of historic Vermont landscapes, has been co-author since 2005 of Pipkin et al., an introductory Environmental Geology textbook, and is the lead author of a new, NSF-funded textbook, Key Concepts in Geomorphology, that uses extensive visuals and photographs to teach about the workings of Earths surface.