Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
in mind and these were to affect the reports they submitted
and the policies that evolved from them; but they were also the
practitioners of fi eldwork. As they brought back information
about distant lands and places, and the peoples and cultures that
occupied them, they were building up pictures of the world. Those
pictures would be refi ned over time but were disseminated over
a wide population. One of the by-products of fi eldwork was the
map, the unique geographical depiction of the Earth's surface
and its characteristics, but that is a theme worthy of separate
consideration.
Fieldwork became the sine qua non of the practice of geography;
it permeated the way in which the discipline was developed. As a
doyen of British physical geography commented in 1948:
The fi eld is the primary source of inspiration and ideas, and inspires
a great part of both the matter and the method of our subject.
S. W. Wooldridge,
The Spirit and Signifi cance of Fieldwork (1948)
Geomorphologists meticulously studied the landforms
produced by the major forces at work on the Earth's surface,
particularly those involving fl owing water, ice, and wind.
Hydrologists focused on the dynamics of rivers and their
impact on landscape, whilst biogeographers examined the great
vegetation formations of the Earth and the plant communities
of which they are formed. Fieldwork in physical geography
often involved measurement of things such as slope angles,
water velocity, or soil properties, and the dating of surface
materials, all sampled according to carefully thought-out research
designs. This fi eldwork produced a mass of data and several
analytical outcomes, often geared to testing specifi c hypotheses.
Measurements led to knowledge and understanding of current
rates of operation of surface processes, such as erosion and
deposition, and to quantitative reconstructions of environmental
change.
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