Landscape Sensitivity: (British Geomorphological Research Group Symposium S.)

This volume is the outcome of the British Geomorphological Research Group (BGRG) sessions at the Annual Conference of the Institute of British Geographers (IBG) held at the University of Sheffield in January 1991. The theme of the BGRG sessions, landscape sensitivity, was selected for two main reasons: first, in an attempt to address an important issue in studies of geomorphology and environmental change; and second, to provide a conference topic that crossed the thematic boundaries in geomorphology and therefore appealed to a wide audience. The presentations were divided amongst four groups that reflected the ways in which presenters had interpreted the sensitivity issue or the manner in which sensitivity could be best addressed or understood in a geomorphological context: modelling landscape sensitivity, catchment scale sensitivity, sensitivity to human disturbance, and geomorphological processes, landscape sensitivity and climatic change. Sixteen of the chapters in this book began life as presentations at Sheffield. The remaining chapters were not submitted for presentation at Sheffield but were subsequently supplied in manuscript form. This has contributed to the organization of the book differing from that of the conference, with chapters divided over three sensitivity sections. The first relates landscape sensitivity to geomorphic processes and climatic change, including overviews, case studies and modelling, the second concerns sensitivity in relation to agricultural and pastoral land use issues, and the third contains two chapters that deal with sensitivity in relation to built environments.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 Geomorphic processes, landscape sensitivity and climatic change: the sensitivity of river channels in the landscape system, K. Gregory and P. Downs; use of Caesium-137 measurements to investigate relationships between erosion rates and topography, T.A. Quine and D.E. Walling; landscape sensitivity and change on Dartmoor, A.J.W. Gerrard; landscape sensitivity and biogeomorphic response to past and future climatic shifts in inter-tropical Africa, N. Roberts and P. Barker; geomorphological processes, environmental change and landscape sensitivity in the Kalahari region of Southern Africa, P.A. Shaw and D.S.G. Thomas; thresholds in a sensitive landscape - the Loess region of central China, E. Derbyshire, et al; endogenic and exogenic controls on fault-scarp and range-front morphology, I.S. Stewart; shallow failure mechanisms during the Holocene - utilization of a coupled slope hydrology-slope stability model, S.M. Brooks, et al; numerical experiments on the orthogonal profile with particular reference to changing environmental parameters, J. Hardisty. Part 2 Land use and landscape sensitivity: sensitivity of the British landscape to erosion, R. Evans; the sensitivity of Downland arable land to erosion by water, J. Boardman; catchment sensitivity to land use control, T.P. Burt, et al; catchment controls on the recent sediment history of Slapton Ley, Southwest England, A.L. Heathwaite; the sensitivity of rivers to nitrate leaching - the sensitivity of near-stream land as a nutrient retention zone, N.E. Haycock and T.P. Burt; environmental response and sensitivity to permanent cattle ranching, semi-arid western central Botswana, J.S. Perkins and D.S.G. Thomas; successional pattern and landscape sensitivity in the Mediterranean and Near East, M.A. Blumler. Part 3 Sensitivity and built environments: the environmental sensitivity of blistering of limestone walls in Oxford, England - a preliminary study, H.A. Viles; sensitivity of South Australian environments to marina construction, N. Harvey.