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.