Key Concepts in Geomorphology

Paul R. Bierman · David R. Montgomery

Dec 2013 · Sold by Macmillan Higher Education

About this ebook

Written for introductory geomorphology courses, Key Concepts in Geomorphology offers an integrative, applications-centered approach to the study of the Earth’s dynamic surface. Bierman and Montgomery draw from the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics to help students get a basic understanding of Earth surface processes and the evolution of topography over short and long timescales. The authors also hone in on practical applications, showing how scientists are using geomorphological research to tackle critical societal issues (natural disaster response, safer infrastructure, protecting species, and more).

About the author

Paul Bierman has been a professor of Geology and Natural Resources at the University of Vermont since 1993. His research and teaching expertise focus on the interaction of people and Earths dynamic surface. Bierman is a native of Baltimore, Maryland. For college, he moved north to Massachusetts, where he earned a bachelors degree in Geology at Williams College. After several years working as an environmental consultant in Boston, Bierman moved north again to the University of Washington in Seattle where he earned both a masters and doctoral degree in Geology. After a short post-doctoral interlude far to the south in Australia, Bierman has been a professor at the University of Vermont since 1993.Bierman's research has taken him around the globe. He has studied erosion in Australia, South America, and several countries in Africa and the Middle East. In Greenland, Bierman and his graduate students are tracing the history of the Greenland Ice sheet over the last million years, an adventure that repeatedly takes them helicoptering over the ice. In Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York, Bierman and his students created the first record of storminess and erosion that extended back over the last 10,000 years how many of the past megastorms they identified were hurricanes?Bierman works extensively communicating science to the pubic. He teaches summer science programs for highly motivated high school students, directs a public web site (www.uvm.edu/landscape) holding over 70,000 photographs of historic Vermont landscapes, has been co-author since 2005 of Pipkin et al., an introductory Environmental Geology textbook, and is the lead author of a new, NSF-funded textbook, Key Concepts in Geomorphology, that uses extensive visuals and photographs to teach about the workings of Earths surface.