Each account of landscape evolution, development, or history--whether narrative, chronology, model, or otherwise--is considered a story. Each story implies a beginning (starting point, initial condition, genesis), a middle, and an end. The middle includes the processes, transformations, or pathways connecting the beginning to the end. The end may be a final state, culmination, or conclusion per se, or the contemporary or observed state at a given point in time.

The evolutionary path (EP) described by each story is presumed to exist, and thus has one beginning, one middle, and one end. A complete story includes an account of all three. However, many scientific stories are incomplete, and may include only two of the three elements, with the third conjectured or inferred. For example, an initial condition and end state may be known, but the processes or transitions between them unknown. Or the processes or changes may be known, but either the initial state or end point unknown. Thus, while a complete story has one each of beginning, middle and end, an incomplete story may have >1 potential, unknown, or conjectured beginnings, middles, or ends.

History, wrote Tony Horwitz (2008), is an arbitrary collection of facts and observations. Myths are created and perpetuated. To expand a bit in the context of historical Earth and environmental sciences, history is an arbitrary collection of facts and observations, filtered by aspects of historical preservation, and limitations of perception and interpretation. Historical narratives are created, negotiated, and perpetuated. Historical narratives—explanations, chronologies, historical descriptions, chronicles, and, yes, myths—are forms of stories. The key point is that while historical science is (at least at its best) grounded in facts and data, however censored and variably perceived, the reporting and dissemination thereof is in the form of created, negotiated, and perpetuated stories.

The vast majority of historical narratives in Earth and environmental sciences and interpretations of observed temporal patterns, I argue here, can be characterized in terms of nine basic storylines:

1. Steady-state equilibrium. These are balance-of-nature narratives, indicating that landscapes proceed toward some state of stability or balance. Equilibrium theory in geosciences, pedology, and ecology underpins this storyline.

Earth’s climate is changing. Always has, always will; so that statement would’ve been true a thousand years ago, and will be so a thousand years hence. However, evidence is accumulating that climate is now changing faster and more radically than ever before in human history, faster than ever before in the recent geologic past, and in some respects faster than in Earth history, period. 

Villagers cluster on Polder 32, an artificial island in southwest Bangladesh with an uncertain future (Tanmoy Bhaduri, Sciencemag.org)

In addition to sea-level rise, global warming puts Bangladesh at greater risk for stronger and more frequence tropical cyclones.

Geomorphic and pedologic systems and ecosystems may sometimes experience mode shifts from dynamically unstable, divergent development to dynamically stable and convergent (or vice versa)(Phillips, 2014).  Here I explore the idea of how this can occur in the evolution of soil, regolith, and weathering profiles. 

Weathering profile, NSW, Australia

In a 2018 article, I analyzed the model below, based on epikarst soils.

From Phillips, 2018. 

In a spatial adjacency graph (SAG) the graph nodes or vertices are nominal or categorical spatial entities—for example soil types, landform types, geological formations, or vegetation communities. Any two nodes are connected (i.e., there exists link between them) if they are spatially contiguous. Thus, if  types A and B at least sometimes occur adjacent to each other, they are connected, and if they never occur spatially adjacent to each other, there is no edge connecting A, B. In the attached note I address a spatially explicit form of SAGs, based on raster representation of categorical spatial units. In particular, it presents a method for assessing the complexity of these spatial patterns. 

Raster soil map of Essex County, Vermont. The colors indicate the raster soil types; these are overlaid with additional data. Source: https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/soils/survey/geo/?cid=stelprdb1254424

It has been 21 months since I posted to this blog. Partly that can be attributed to laziness; partly to not having anything new to say (at least about Earth and environmental sciences and geography) that I did not have another outlet for. I'm not sure anyone really noticed the blog was gone, but now it is back. 

Much of that no-blog time was spent writing a book, to be published by Elsevier, on landscape evolution. This will integrate geomorphological, pedological, ecological, and hydrological theories on the evolution of landscapes, ecosystems, and other Earth surface systems. It is grounded in an approach based on the inseparability of landform, soil, and ecosystem development, vs. the traditional semi-independent treatment of geomorphic, ecological, pedological, and hydrological phenomena. Key themes are the coevolution of biotic and abiotic components of the environment; selection whereby more efficient and/or durable structures, forms, & patterns are preferentially formed and preserved; and the interconnected role of laws, place factors, and history. 

As climate change and its many impacts unfold, many worse than we had forecasted or feared, many observers have indicated that Earth is entering a “new normal.” This is not wrong. However, with respect to our ability to understand, adapt to, and predict environmental change from here on out, it is probably more accurate to say there is no normal. The climate and environment that we will contend with will be unlike any our species—much less our infrastructures, institutions, and cultures—has ever encountered. I agree with those who say, sometimes circumspectly and sometimes directly, that it is time to panic. Not in the sense of panic as uncontrollable fear or anxiety that can cause wildly unthinking behavior, but in the sense of another definition: a frenzied hurry to do something. Scientists hate to be called alarmist, but when the house is on fire, you sound the alarm.

New York Times, February, 2019

Every day, it seems, there is another news story or reports of yet more evidence that the global climate is changing, either as we have predicted for years—or worse and faster. The climate system is incredibly complex, and climatologists, climate modelers and paleoclimatologists are furiously working to reduce the uncertainty. Despite the uncertainties and complexities, at this point it is clear that:

•Global mean temperatures are rising.

•Ocean heat content is increasing.

•Sea ice cover is, on average, decreasing (both in areal extent and thickness).

Arctic sea ice cover is in serious long-term decline (photo: Huffpost Canada)

•Ice sheets and glaciers are shrinking.

•Permafrost is thawing.

•Sea level is rising. 

•Changes in climate-sensitive biota, ecosystems, and landforms are all consistent with a warming climate. 

•The major driving force is a dramatic increase in heat-trapping greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane.

Just published in Progress in Physical Geography: Place Formation and Axioms for Reading the Natural Landscape. This work is an attempt to develop some formalisms for analyzing the biophysical landscape from the perspective of place formation--how landscapes, environments, and places evolve and become different from each other. My original efforts were in the form of conceptual model, but (thanks in large measure to reviewers and critiques of earlier versions) I realized that (A) the critical principles could be reduced to axioms, and (B) a set of guidelines or axioms is a more effective (and honest) way to present the approach. The abstract is below:

A copy of the full text is attached.

Eight Simple Techniques for Critiquing Academic Publications

Stuck reviewing an article manuscript, or preparing for yet another graduate seminar? Need to diminish the accomplishments of an annoying colleague or hated rival? Want to appear superior to the others in your roundtable discussion? Want to do these things without having to actually read the whole damn thing? Here are eight simple, effective techniques for providing negative critiques of academic papers, articles, and books.

1. The analysis is oversimplified; the problem is more complex than that.

Of course it is—it’s always more complex. The real world is infinitely complex, and no representation—words, pictures, equations, numbers, diagrams, or otherwise—can capture all of its richness and variety. Thus you can always find something potentially significant the author has omitted, and you can always correctly observe that reality is far more complicated.

2. Deconstructing the binary.