Introduction

This book accompanies the class G318 Processes in the Surface Environment as taught by the author at Portland State University (PSU). The class is the first of the upper division classes that students majoring in Geology or Earth Science take at PSU.

Although many students in the class have recently taken at least some university-level math, chemistry, and physics, the techniques learned in those allied science classes have not extensively been applied to their previous geology coursework.  One theme of G318 and this book is therefore to quantitatively analyze processes that occur at the earth’s surface in order to gain a more mechanistic understanding of how they work.

Each of the chapters in this book focuses on a specific geomorphic process, but several fundamental concepts are shared among the different processes. Specifically, the ideas that balancing forces, assuming steady-state, or conserving a quantity like mass is often a good starting point for solving a problem. The fact that shear stress created by gravity acting on a sloped surface drives many geomorphic processes also shows up repeatedly.

Many of the examples contained in this book are modified from the vignettes associated with the textbook Key Concepts in Geomorphology by Bierman and Montgomery and contributed by researchers from around the world. I’ve adopted that same terminology for each chapter of this book. Interested students can explore more vignettes from the Science Education Resource Center (SERC), a grant-funded office at Carleton College.