Developments in Geomorphology that led to Revolution in Geomorphic Thought with respect to the

Davisian Concept, the Grade and Base Level.

Content uploaded by Charles Anukwonke

Author content
Content may be subject to copyright.

“The Development of Geomorphology up to Wood, Penck and King:

Their contribution and how it led to revolution in Geomorphic thought
with special regards to G. K. Gilbert and Powel”
By

GEOMORPHOLOGY
Geomorphology is formed from three Greek words and meaning: γῆ, ge, "earth";
μορφή, morfé, "form"; and λόγος, logos, "study" and is the scientific study of the
origin and evolution of topographic and bathymetric features created by physical or
chemical processes operating at or near the earth's surface (Wikipedia 2015)
In its simplest form according to B. W. Sparks, (1948) Geomorphology has three
main aspects;
i. Geomorphology is the study of the relations between landforms and the
underlying rocks, including the interactions between denudational
process and rock strength.
ii. Geomorphology also focuses on the study of the evolution of landscapes
which is often termed denudation chronology.
iii. Finally, the third aspect of geomorphology is the study of the actual
processes of erosion which give rise to landforms. This definition
endeavors to understand the action of mass movement, of ice- action, and
wind action as well as the processes of weathering.
Geomorphologists seek to understand why landscapes look the way they do, to
understand landform history and dynamics and to predict changes through a
combination of field observations, physical experiments and numerical modeling.
The surface of the earth is modified by a combination of surface processes that
sculpt landscapes, and geologic processes that cause tectonic uplift and subsidence,
and shape the coastal geography. Surface processes comprise the action of water,
wind, ice, fire, and living things on the surface of the earth, along with chemical
reactions that form soils and alter material properties, the stability and rate of
change of topography under the force of gravity, and other factors, such as (in the
very recent past) human alteration of the landscape. Many of these factors are
strongly mediated by climate. Geologic processes include the uplift of mountain
ranges, the growth of volcanoes, isostatic changes in land surface elevation
(sometimes in response to surface processes), and the formation of deep
sedimentary basins where the surface of the earth drops and is filled with material
eroded from other parts of the landscape. The earth surface and its topography
therefore are an intersection of climatic, hydrologic, and biologic action with
geologic processes.
The history of geomorphology is familiar with theories of global approach, which
represents a revolutionary progress in geomorphological idea development. They
haven‟t provided a complete answer about global (planet) relief development, but
showed themselves as appropriate for explanation and interpretation of particular
cases and parts of developmental regularity. The first of those theories so called the

4
Davisian Geographical Cycle is connected with the name of the American
Geomorphologist William Morris Davis (1899), W. Penck (1924) and L. C. King
(1962).
In the framework of his theory W. M. Davis tried to represent the relief form
development and the whole Earth‟s relief evolution in a very progressive way. In
this connection he developed his theory from a simple and logical equation based
on three basic keystones: structure + stage (span of time) + cycle (process).
Hence, to account for the development of geomorphic thought, following an
understanding of geomorphological processes shaping the landforms, a review of
the historical milestones remain significant.
2.0. The Views of the Ancient Thought
There are views of the prehistoric thinkers on the development of landforms
starting with the idea of “uniformitarianism” – the present is the key to past which
promoted the understanding of landscapes. Philosophers like Herodotus, Aristotle,
Strabo and Seneca gave the origins to the understanding of geomorphic thinking by
inductive logic.
Herodotus (485?-425 B. C.) is deeply remembered for some of his geological
observations. E.g., he recognized the importance of the yearly increments of silt
and clay deposited in Nile and credit was given to him on the statement “Egypt is
the gift of the river. He is also noted shells in the hills of Egypt and concluded
from their presence that the sea at some time must have extended over Lower
Egypt and anticipating to some degree the idea of changing sea levels a matter of
geomorphic significance.
Aristotle ( 384-322 B. C.) believed that the waters which flowed out of springs
consisted of (a) some rainwater which had percolated downward (b) water which
had been formed in the earth by condensation (c)water that had been condensed
within the earth from vapors of uncertain origins
He recognized that streams removed materials from the land and deposited it as an
alluvium and cited examples from the Black sea region where river alluvium had
accumulated.
Strabo (54 B. C. – A.D. 25) noted examples of local sinking and the rise of land.
He attributed the Vale of Tempe a result of earthquakes which, along with volcanic
activity, were still attributed to the force of winds within the earth‟s interior. He
also identified and recognized the importance of river alluvium and thought that
the delta of a river varied in size according to the nature of the region drained by
the river.
5
Seneca ( ? B. C. – A. D. 65) invented that the local nature of earthquakes, and
believed that they are a resultant effect of the internal struggle of subterranean
winds. He also held the idea that rainfall was insufficient to account for rivers,
although he recognized the power of streams to abrade their valleys
He also believed that earthquakes and volcanoes were closely related in origins and
he attributed earthquakes to the effects of the mingling of moist and dry air within
the earth.
3.0. The Dawn of Modern Geomorphic Thought
Avicenna ( lbn- Sina, 980-1037) held views on the origin of mountains which
divided them into two classes, those produced by “uplifting of the ground such as
takes place in earthquakes “ and those which result “from the effects of running
water and wind in hollowing out valleys in soft rocks.
It is clearly visible that some of the ancient philosophers had the idea of land
destruction by erosional processes.
Leonardo da Vinci ( 1425- 1519) is otherwise the first representatives of the
formative period in geologic thinking. He recognized that valleys were cut by
streams and that streams carried materials from one part of the earth and deposited
them elsewhere.
The French man Buffon (1707- 1788) recognized the powerful erosive ability of
streams to destroy the land and thought that the land would eventually be reduced
to sea level.
The French man Gutterhard (1715-1786) discussed the degradation of
mountains by streams and recognized that not all of the materials removed by
streams were immediately carried to the sea but that a considerable part of it went
as part of materials in floodplain development. Others in line here are Desmarest
and De Saussure.
James Hutton (1726- 1797) recognized the evidence for metamorphism of rocks,
but his greatest contribution came in expounding the concept and doctrine of
Uniformitarianism (the present is key to the past) in opposition to that of
catastrophism.
The concept of a river system and its geomorphic significance was expounded
beautifully by Playfair.
6
James Hutton „s theory made the understanding of the basic concepts of our
modern ideas on the earth sculpture as he recognized marine as well as fluvial
erosion, but gave most attention to the development of valleys by streams.
4.0. Developments in Europe
James Hutton successor, Sir. Charles Lyell (1797-1875) propounded further on
the uniformitarianism ideology but could not accept the full implications of stream
erosion conceived by Hutton.
Lyell wavered mainly in his belief in the efficacy of erosion by running water and
in his later publications on the principles attributed increasing importance to
marine denudation. There is also the recognition of the significance of the ice age
during which ice sheets covered much of northern Europe.
5.0. Developments in North America
The period from 1875 – 1900 was regarded as the heroic age in American
Geomorphology. The geological surveys in western America were headed by three
Pioneer thinkers in the field of geomorphology. These men along with others
collectively laid the ground bases upon which W. M. Davis later used to build the
concept of the geomorphic cycle. They are: J. W. Powell (1834- 1902), G. K.
Gilbert (1843-1918) and C. E. Dutton (1841- 1912) W. D. Thornbury, (1969)
Powel from his studies in Uina Mountains was impressed by the importance of
geologic structure as a basis of classification of landforms. From the results of
stream erosion, he proposed two classifications of stream valleys: (1) based on the
relationships between valleys and the strata which they cross. (2) A classification
of valleys according to their origin where he recognized antecedent, consequent
and super- imposed valleys. These terms are still being used to describe valleys.
Powel also generalized the concept of the limiting level of land reduction known as
the BASE LEVEL.
Here he recognized that the processes of erosion operating undisturbed upon the
land would eventually reduce it to a lowland little above sea level which also
brought the idea of the peneplain. He also noted the geomorphic differences
between scarps resulting from erosion and those produced by displacement of
rocks. He recognized that stream divides migrate, but it remained for Gilbert to
realize the full implication of this fact.
G. K. Gilbert was so much indebted for a keen analysis of the processes of sub-
aerial erosion and the many modifications which valleys undergo as streams erode
7
the land. He particularly recognized the importance of lateral planetion by streams
in the development of valleys. He established the relation between stream load and
such factors as river volume, velocity and gradient.
Gilbert (1877) defined grade as a condition of balance between erosion and
deposition maintained by a process later termed negative feedback (Gilbert, 1964).
He extended the concept to operate not only in stream channels but also on valley-
side slopes and interfluves and so viewed the whole landscape as capable of
operating in a steady state with fluvial processes behaving like engines performing
work according to the laws of thermodynamics (Pyne 1980:89). Thus, for Gilbert,
the assumption of a tendency to achieve grade was ubiquitous in space and time –
this was the core of his theory of dynamic geomorphology (Baker and Pyne 1978;
and Chorley and Beckinsale 1980).
Davis (1902) confused matters by attempting to use the graded condition in a vain
attempt to distinguish between different cyclic landform stages (Kesseli 194)
Dutton C. E. is chiefly remembered for his in-depth analysis of individual
landforms and his recognition of evidence in the Colorado Plateaus area of a period
of land reduction preceding the cutting of the present canyons when the landscape
had been reduced to one of low relief. His examples of how the base level concept
applied to the Colorado Plateaus area undoubtedly contributed to the introduction
by W. M. Davis of the idea of peneplanation.
William Morris Davis (1850- 1934)
An early popular geomorphic model was the geographical cycle or cycle of erosion
model of broad-scale landscape evolution developed by William Morris Davis. It
was an elaboration of the uniformitarianism theory that had first been proposed by
James Hutton (1726–1797). (Oldroyd, David R. & Grapes, 1961) With regard to
valley forms, for example, uniformitarianism posited a sequence in which a river
runs through a flat terrain, gradually carving an increasingly deep valley, until the
side valleys eventually erode, flattening the terrain again, though at a lower
elevation. It was thought that tectonic uplift could then start the cycle over. In the
decades following Davis's development of this idea, many of those studying
geomorphology sought to fit their findings into this framework, known today as
"Davisian" (Oldroyd, David R. & Grapes,1961) Davis's ideas are of historical
importance, but have been largely superseded today, mainly due to their lack of
predictive power and qualitative nature (Oldroyd, David R. & Grapes,1961)
W. M. Davis will be probably be remembered longest for his concept of the
geomorphic cycle, an idea perhaps vaguely glimpsed by Desmarest which in
simplest analysis is the idea that in the evolution of landscapes there is a systematic
sequence of land forms which makes possible the recognition of stages of
development, a sequence that he designated as youth, maturity and old age. His

8
idea that differences in land forms are largely explainable in terms of differences in
geologic structure, geomorphic processes and the stage of development was long
firmly rooted in the thinking of most students in geomorphology.
Davis also introduced the term peneplain to describe the low and gently undulating
plain which the processes of sub- aerial erosion presumably develop at the
penultimate stage of the geomorphic cycle.
The rise of the German school of thought under the leadership of Walter Penck
during the 1920‟s and 1930‟s was to some degree a challenge to the peneplain
concept, although Penck did not completely negate the existence of peneplains.
W. Penck and others staged a revolt against the Davisian concept and the
peneplain and found some adherents. This geographical cycle after W. M. Davis as
affected by running water assumed the relatively rapid initial uplift of the land
which might have been followed by a period of stills and that permitted a cycle to
run its course, culminating to the idea of peneplain.
Penck and other followers have maintained that the Davisian Cycle is not normal
sequence as attributed to the normal cycle of erosion rather that more commonly
rise of the land at the beginning of a period of uplift is extremely slow and is
followed by an accelerated rate of uplift which would prevent the landscape from
passing through stages of development that would terminate in a region of low
relief.
Several American Geologists have been skeptical of the postulation that the earth
surface is ever stable long enough to allow a cycle to proceed to completion. No
completely satisfactory substitute for Davisian thought has been proposed but
Hack (1960), developed what he called the theory of dynamic equilibrium.
In the 1920s, Walther Penck developed an alternative model to Davis's (Oldroyd,
David R. & Grapes, 1961) Penck thought that landform evolution was better
described as an alternation between ongoing processes of uplift and denudation, as
opposed to Davis's model of a single uplift followed by decay. He also emphasized
that in many landscapes slope evolution occurs by back wearing of rocks, not by
Davisian-style surface lowering, and his science tended to emphasize surface
process over understanding in detail the surface history of a given locality. Penck
was German, and during his lifetime his ideas were at times rejected vigorously by
the English-speaking geomorphology community (Oldroyd, David R. & Grapes,
1961)
Both Davis and Penck were trying to place the study of the evolution of the earth's
surface on a more generalized, globally relevant footing than it had been

9
previously. In the early 19th century, authors - especially in Europe - had tended to
attribute the form of landscapes to local climate, and in particular to the specific
effects of glaciation and peri-glacial processes.
In contrast, both Davis and Penck were seeking to emphasize the importance of
evolution of landscapes through time and the generality of the earth's surface
processes across different landscapes under different conditions.
The most sweeping application of the pediplain concept has been made by King
(1950, 1953). He considered the pediplain to be the ultimate cyclical land form and
stated that “a peneplain in the Davisian Sense, resulting from slope reduction and
down wearing, does not exist in nature and thus be redefined as an imaginary
landform”. He interpreted widely separated erosion surfaces in Africa, Asia, North
America, Europe, South America and Australia as ancient pediplains.
The pediplain concept unquestionably represents an important contribution to
geomorphic thinking and doubtless numerous topographic surfaces which have
been called peneplains can better be explained as products of pedimentation.
W. Penck stood up against Davis‟ agnostic view based on the study of the nature of
matter and its movements and on the uniformity of geomorphological evolution.
According to W. Penck, relief evolution can be compared with the equation, which
can determine an unknown development process out of the known forms and
exterior forces and their influence. That process, Penck declared, depends upon the
Earth‟s crust vertical movements. Penck called his method “a morphological
analysis”. He tried to explain the development process by the relief form analysis.
Contrary to Davis, who emphasized the role of the exterior forces on relief
formation and evolution, in Penck‟s interpretation the stress is on the endogenic
processes.
Such Penck‟s approach lead him logically to an excessively emphasized auto-
dynamic point of view, according to which, “if the endogenic preconditions are
identical there is no possibility that in particular areas with different climate there
will be different denudation forms with different evolutions”( Penck, 1924). Such
wrong comprehension of nature dialectics is a big mistake of Penck‟s view; just
because of that he gave only partial solutions, which cannot explain the relief
evolution integrality.
Penck‟s interpretation is, therefore, narrower than that of Davis.
To sum it up, Penck, besides the endogenic processes, has considered only river
erosion and slope denudation as significant factors in relief formation, completely
neglecting the role of ice, sea and wind.

REFERENCES
Baker, V.R. and Pyne, S. (1978) „G.K. Gilbert and modern geomorphology‟,
American Journal of Science, 278: 97-123.
B. W. Sparks, (1948): Geomorphology.( Geographies for Advanced Study) Second
Edition. Longman Publisher ISBN 0 -582 -48147 -3
Chorley, R.J. and Beckinsale, R.P. (1980) „G.K. Gilbert‟s geomorphology‟,
Geological Society of America Special Paper, 183: 129-42.
Davis, W.M. (1902) „Base level, grade and peneplain‟, Journal of Geology, 10: 77-
111.
Gilbert, G.K. (1877) Report on the Geology of the Henry Mountains, Washington,
DC, U.S. Department of the Interior, 160p.
Hack, J. T. (1960): Interpretation of Erosional Topography in Humid Temperate
Regions, Am. J. Sci. 258- A, pp. 80-97
Kesseli, J.E. (1941) „The concept of the graded river‟, Journal of Geology, 49:
561-88.
King L. C. (1950): The Study of the Worlds Plainlands: A New Approach in
Geomorphology, Quart. J. Geol. Soc. London 106, pp 101- 127
King L. C. (1953): Canons of Landscape Evolution, Bull. Geol. Soc. Am, 64,
pp.721-762
William D. Thornbury, (1969): Principles of Geomorphology. Second Edition.
Wiley and Toppan International Edition. SBN 471 86197 9
Oldroyd, David R. & Grapes, Rodney H. (1961): Contributions to the history of
geomorphology and Quaternary geology: an introduction. In: GRAPES, R.
H., OLDROYD, D. & GRIGELIS, A. (eds) History of Geomorphology and
Quaternary Geology. Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 301,
1–17.
Penck, Walther, (1924): Die Morphologische Analyse, J. Engelhorns Nachf,
Stugarrd, 283 pp.
Pyne, S.J. (1980) Grove Karl Gilbert, a Great Engine of Research, Austin, Univ.
Texas, 306p.
www.wikipedia.com/ Geomorphology/ History/Scope.html

11
 Geomorphology.( Geographies for Advanced Study) Second Edition
 Jan 1948
 B W Sparks
B. W. Sparks, (1948): Geomorphology.( Geographies for Advanced Study) Second Edition.