Topography and the environment / Топография и окружающая среда

Topography is at once a fundamental and a subtle environmental factor. It wields large and small influences over all other factors of the ecosphere -climate, water storage and movement, soils, animals and plants, and human activities. Several conspicuous topographic influences are well known. Most readers will be aware that a hike up a mountain is the climatic equivalent of a trek from a lower to a higher latitude. They will also be familiar with the stark climatic and botanical contrasts between northfacing and south-facing slopes in the European Alps. Subtle influences are not so well known but are equally significant. In the French Alps, slope exposure affects alpine marmots' habitat preferences and growth rates. Problems of air pollution in Mexico City are associated with poor ventilation and local and regional wind systems that are largely under topographic control. Sea-floor topography may subtly alter marine processes. On 17 July 1998, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake spawned three tsunamis (tidal waves) whose size would normally be associated with a larger quake. The 15-m waves killed more than 2200 people living along Papua New Guinea’s north coast. The waves may have grown abnormally large due to the three-dimensional topography of the nearby sea-floor. Equally, seismic vibrations may have triggered submarine landslides or gas explosions that could have given the waves a boost. <...>