Landscape Evolution - by Jonathan D Phillips (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Landscape Evolution: Landforms, Ecosystems and Soils asks us to think holistically, to look for the interactions between the Earth's component surface systems, to consider how universal laws and historical and geographical contingency work together, and to ponder the implications of nonlinear dynamics in landscapes, ecosystems, and soils. Development, evolution, landforms, topography, soils, ecosystems, and hydrological systems are inextricably intertwined. While empirical studies increasingly incorporate these interactions, theories and conceptual frameworks addressing landforms, soils, and ecosystems are pursued largely independently. This is partly due to different academic disciplines, traditions, and lexicons involved, and partly due to the disparate time scales sometimes encountered. Landscape Evolution explicitly synthesizes and integrates these theories and threads of inquiry, arguing that all are guided by a general principle of efficiency selection. A key theme is that evolutionary trends are probabilistic, emergent outcomes of efficiency selection rather than purported goal functions. This interdisciplinary reference will be useful for academic and research scientists across the Earth sciences.

Review Quotes

"Starting with a deceptively simple sentence, "Landforms, topography, soils, and ecosystems affect, and are affected by, each other" (p. 1), this book tackles some of the biggest questions about the world around us. In essence, it sets out a vision and methodology for an integrated, coevolutionary approach to the development of Earth surface systems. Jonathan Phillips has a very strong track record of research and writing on the interactions between geomorphological, pedological, and ecological processes, with a particular focus on coevolutionary dynamics. He is the only person who could have written this volume, in which he brings together many strands of his work to date, providing a provocative, detailed, and magisterial account of what we know and the challenges that face attempts to push back the frontiers of knowledge. The author is unafraid of delving into complexity and controversy, and expects a lot of his readers. As a result, this volume is not an entirely easy read, but it is well worth wrestling with. He manages to link big, brave conceptual ideas with formal mathematical approaches (such as abstracted systems theory) and apply these to detailed case studies. He covers a broad sweep of ideas and material from a diverse range of disciplines, and explains concepts in an engaging way. I learned a lot. Some of the contents will be familiar to those who have read some of his prolific output of scientific papers over the years, but the novelty lies in bringing it all together in a single place, and in attempting to tie it all together convincingly....

Who should read this volume? It is aimed at academic and research scientists across the Earth sciences, but students in those disciplines will also find much of interest here. Its strong points are its bold vision and persuasive arguments....

Overall, this is a stimulating and brave volume, which provides a thought-provoking summary of a major corpus of scientific scholarship." --Heather A. Viles, The Quarterly Review of Biology