This is a well designed textbook that contains a healthy balance between qualitative and quantitative descriptions of geomorphic processes pitched at a level that suites 3rd/4th year undergraduate students. The prose is authoritative, up to date, and accessible, supported by well-presented and relevant diagrams and illustrations with useful inset boxes to expand upon specific key topics. The authors describe the book design as built around stand-alone chapters to enable course tutors to pick and mix to suit their own course structure. I found this worked well and the feedback from students has, so far, been very positive.
The book is set on a solid foundation with introductory chapters that explain the large-scale processes that couple deep earth with surface topography, including local and regional-scale isostasy, rheology and mantle flow, and includes some topical discussion on dynamic topography. Few geomorphology textbooks adequately set the scene by considering the impacts of these fundamental processes on landscape topography, so it was pleasing to see these addressed from the outset. Chapter 4 considers stress accommodation in the brittle strong lithosphere, whilst Chapter 5 contains a useful synthesis of key aspects of the climate system relevant to geomorphology, focusing on atmospheric circulation and orography. However, I felt the descriptions of absolute dating methods in Chapter 6, which contains an excellent in depth review of cosmogenic nuclide dating, was unbalanced by largely ignoring relative dating methods used in reconnaissance mapping and to inform sampling for absolute dating analyses. Similarly, Chapter 7 on weathering, only touches upon the carbon cycle and the organic carbon cycle is largely ignored. Chapters 8–16 individually explain the processes and associated landforms relating to weathering, glaciers, hillslopes, rivers, eolian transport, and coastal geomorphology.
Concluding chapters are centered on the author's research interests, Chapter 17 on the geomorphology of big floods, and Chapter 18, a case study on the Santa Cruz landscape. Although the subject matter was interesting I felt an anti climax and was left wanting more. Having learned about the different processes I wanted to read about examples of linkage between geomorphic processes and reading landscape change across a wider, more representative range of earth's landscape geomorphology. For example, mountain belts, which have a profound influence on the Earth system, have been largely neglected. This is a minor quibble and, to be fair, to cover the range of whole landscapes in any detail would easily fill another book. The appendices provide a useful adjunct with detail on the physics and key mathematical formulas, rules and functions that are relevant to the book contents. Should students want to expand depth of learning the authors have also produced a free electronic book (Little Book of Geomorphology) covering the physics of the geomorphic principles behind this textbook, downloadable from Andersons academic web pages. In summary Geomorphology: The Mechanics and Chemistry of Landscapes has the breadth and depth of content that puts it in a class of its own. I have little doubt that this will soon be the book of choice for geomorphology courses.
