Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
increasing altitude (on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, for
example), the alignment of volcanoes, and the course of ocean
currents. In his major works, written around the middle of
the 19th century, such as
Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical
Description of the Universe
, published in 1849, he emphasized
not only relationships within the natural geo-ecosphere but also
linkages to human societies. A year earlier, Mary Somerville,
based at the University of Oxford, published
Physical Geography
and defi ned the subject as 'a description of the Earth, the sea
and the air, with their inhabitants animal and vegetable, of the
distribution of these organized beings and the causes of that
distribution'.
Another major early infl uence was the publication of Charles
Darwin's
The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
in 1859. This work had profound effects on all the natural
environmental sciences, including physical geography. Views
that had regarded the geo-ecosphere as harmoniously integrated
but essentially static had to accommodate an ever-changing,
continually adjusting and evolving Earth's surface. Thus, Thomas
Huxley's
Physiography
, published in 1877, while developing
his theme with particular reference to the Thames Basin in
south-eastern England, emphasized chains of causal connections
between the various natural components of the landscape within
an evolutionary framework.
By the early 20th century, the concept of a 'cycle of erosion', also
termed the 'geographical cycle', was developed in particular by the
American geographer William Morris Davis (see box). He used the
idea that landforms represent various stages in a sequence from
'youth' to 'maturity' and 'old age'. This proved to be the dominant
theory in geomorphology for the next half century. Although
the geomorphological landscape was seen as the product of
structure (the underlying geology), process (primarily running
water eroding the surface), and stage (the age of the landscape
and hence its stage within the cycle), it was the emphasis on
