Geomorphological Techniques

Geomorphological Techniques Geomorphological Techniques SECOND EDITION Edited for the British Geomorphological Research Group by Andrew Goudie University of Oxford with the assistance of John Lewin Keith Richards Malcolm Anderson Tim Burt Brian Whalley Peter Worsley LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 1990 by Unwin Hyman Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge's collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 1990 Andrew S.Goudie and contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 0-203-43059-X Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-73883-7 (Adobe e-Reader Format) ISBN 0-415-11939-1 (Print Edition) Preface to the first edition This book is an attempt to provide geomorphologists and others in the Earth and environmental sciences with a manual of useful techniques. The constraints of length have necessitated the omission from its contents of such matters as statistical analysis, but fortunately we are already well served in this field. Likewise, we have not been able to include all the material that we should have liked on the theme of laboratory simulation and hardware modelling. Throughout the development of this volume we have been forced to recognise that geomorphology grades imperceptibility into related disciplines such as engineering, hydrology, geology, geography and soil science, all of which have an array of techniques with which geomorphologists may have to be familiar. Indeed, even relatively limited topics (such as grain size analysis or scanning electron microscopy) have their own handbooks of techniques. We have thus had to be extremely selective and extremely concise. There are, however, large numbers of techniques employed regularly by geomorphologists which are not covered adequately in other handbooks produced by other disciplines, and this volume aims to concentrate on them. In particular, we have concentrated on methods of obtaining data in the field and on methods of obtaining, through laboratory analysis, data from materials obtained in the field. We have also attempted to present some critical evaluation of the relative merits of the large number of techniques that are often available to deal with a particular problem. In many cases, we have not been able to provide a complete recipe to enable a particular technique to be employed, but at worst we hope that we will have pointed the reader to a source where such a recipe can be obtained. This book should also be used in conjunction with its companion volume (Geomorphological field manual, by