Theories of Landform Development / Теория развития рельефа

Theories of landscape development serve to stimulate communication between the interdependent descriptive, genetic-historical, and process-oriented lines of inquiry in geomorphology, and thereby help to unify them into one science. The theory that has dominated the modern era of geomorphology, which may be said to have begun in 1877 with the publication of G. K. Gilbert’s “Land Sculpture”, was first formulated by W. M. Davis in 1889 and 1899. The prolonged popularity of Davis’ concepts of landscape evolution despite severe criticism of most aspects of his system and despite the availability of at least two major alternative theories, proposed by W. Penck in 1924 and by L. C. King about 1953, suggests that there are compelling and perhaps unrecognized reasons for its appeal. One of these reasons seems to stem from a belief deeply rooted in the origins of geologic thought that natural phenomena progress through cycles. When we begin to recognize and to evaluate such assumptions in the criteria by which we assess theories of landscape development, and when we can recognize that many existing landforms are now relic and that only those in harmony with the processes now affecting them show true relationships between geomorphic form, process, and climate, then we may be able to synthesize a new and long overdue acceptable body of theory for the genesis and development of landscape.