Depressions in landscapes function as buffers for water and sediment. A landscape with depressions has less runoff, less erosion and more sedimentation than a landscape without depressions. Sinks in digital elevation models (DEMs) can be existing features that correctly represent depressions in actual landscapes or spurious features that result from errors in DEM creation. In many erosion, land...

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images are being used more extensively than ever before for geoscience applications in the moist tropics. In this investigation, a RADARSAT1-1 C-HH SAR image acquired in 1998 was used for coastal mapping and land-cover assessment in the Bragança area, in the northern Brazil. The airborne GEMS 1000 X-HH radar image acquired in 1972 during the RADAM Project was also...

This article summarizes the primary outcomes of an interdisciplinary workshop in 2010, sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation, focused on developing key questions and integrative themes for advancing the science of human-landscape systems. The workshop was a response to a grand challenge identified recently by the U.S. National Research Council (2010a)--"How will Earth's surface evol...

Modern river ecosystems undergo constant stress from disturbances such as bank stabilization, channelization, dams, and municipal, agricultural, and industrial water use. As these anthropogenic water requirements persist, more efficient methods of characterizing river reaches are essential. Benthic macroinvertebrates are helpful when evaluating fluvial health, because they are often the first g...

the proposal of geomorphologic matters in relation to tourism is one of interdisciplinary research approaches that has been considered in recent years. in this manner, geomorphological sites are defined as geomorphological landforms and processes that have acquired a scenic/aesthetic, scientific, cultural/historical and/or a social/economic value due to human perception of geological, geomorpho...

This article addresses the problem of how to distinguish between natural and humanly modified features of the cultural landscape with reference to clitter (boulder and stone) masses in the south-west of England using the example of Leskernick hill, Bodmin Moor with its well-preserved Bronze Age settlement. We first set out a series of criteria for distinguishing between natural and humanly plac...

Reconstruction of glacier equilibrium line altitudes (ELAs) associated with advance stages of former ice masses is widely used as a tool for palaeoclimatic studies. This requires an accurate reconstruction of palaeo-glacier surface hypsometry, based on geomorphological evidence. Classically, the approach used to define ice-surface elevations follows the ‘cartographic method’, whereby contours a...

The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) system on board the Terra (EOS AM-1) satellite has been a source of stereoscopic images covering the whole globe at 15-m resolution with consistent quality for over 16 years. The potential of these data in terms of geomorphological analysis and change detection in three dimensions is unrivaled and should be exploited mor...

Radar interferometry is a technique which makes use of interfered signal of two radar echoes for topographic elevation and terrain element mapping. ERS Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) tandem pair with minimum possible temporal baseline of 1-day and with precise orbit control to obtain suitable interferometric spatial baseline is appropriate for interferometric study in terrain analysis. In this ...