Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Field Note
“Hiking to the famed Grinnell Glacier in Glacier National
Park brings one close to nature, but even in this remote part
of the United States the work of humans is inscribed in the
landscape. The parking lot at the start of the six-mile trail,
the trail itself, and the small signs en route are only part of
the human story. When I hiked around the turn in this valley
and arrived at the foot of the glacier, I found myself looking
at a sheet of ice and snow that was less than a third the size
of what it had been in 1850. The likely reason for the shrink-
age is human-induced climate change. If the melt continues
at present rates, scientists predict that the glacier will be
gone by 2030.”
Figure 1.8
Glacier National Park, United States.
© Alexander B. Murphy.
Any cultural landscape has layers of impressions from
years of human activity. As each group of people arrives
and occupies a place, they bring their own technological
and cultural traditions and transform the landscape
accordingly. Each new group of residents can also be
infl uenced by what they fi nd when they arrive and leave
some of it in place. In 1929, Derwent Whittlesey pro-
posed the term sequent occupance to refer to these
sequential imprints of occupants, whose impacts are lay-
ered one on top of the other, each layer having some
impacts on the next
The Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam provides an
interesting urban example of sequent occupance. Arabs
from Zanzibar fi rst chose the African site in 1866 as a
summer retreat. Next, German colonizers imprinted a
new layout and architectural style (wood-beamed
Teutonic) when they chose the city as the center of their
East African colonies in 1891. After World War I, when
Search WWH ::




Custom Search