Southern African Geomorphology

This book covers the geomorphology and landscape evolution of South Africa, focusing on arid landscapes, fluvial systems, karst, Quaternary landscapes, macro-scale geomorphic evolution, coastal geomorphology and applied geomorphology. It would appeal to postgraduate students in Physical Geography (Geomorphology) and Physical Geology and all academics in the earth sciences.

"Southern African geomorphology provides a unique account of the varied physical landscapes of the subcontinent and the landforms which comprise them. It describes these landscapes systematically, and explains their evolution and development against a backdrop of recent trends and new developments within geomorphology. It aims to fill a niche with regard to understanding Earth surface processes and their products in a southern African context. It is an academic text, yet one which will satisfy the lay reader who wishes to learn more about the southern African landscape, and the processes responsible for it."--Back cover.

This book presents a beautifully illustrated overview of the most prominent landscapes of South Africa and the distinctive landforms associated with them. It describes the processes, origins and the environmental significance of those landscapes, including their relationships to human activity of the past and present. The sites described in this book include, amongst others, the Blyde River Canyon, Augrabies Falls, Kruger National Park, Kalahari desert landscapes, the Great Escarpment, Sterkfontein caves and karst system, Table Mountain, Cape winelands, coastal dunes, rocky coasts, Boer War battlefield sites, and Vredefort impact structure. Landscapes and Landforms of South Africa provides a new perspective on South Africa’s scenic landscapes by considering their diversity, long and short term histories, and importance for geoconservation and geotourism. This book will be relevant to those interested in the geology, physical geography and history of South Africa, climate change and landscape tourism.

This volume provides a textbook and reference work on the physical and biotic landscapes of Southern Africa. It examines the links between these environments and the ways in which they have been, are and will likely be subject to change. It covers the geomorphology, soils, vegetation and land use across a range of landscapes, including mountains, coasts, savannah, drylands and wetlands, and identifies the impacts of current and potential climate change and other factors on these environments. The geographical focus is on the region defined by Namibia, South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Swaziland. Illustrated throughout in full colour, the book will serve as a reference volume for researchers and environmental professionals internationally, as well as a textbook for senior undergraduate and graduate-level students of geography, ecology and environmental studies in Southern Africa.

"In this Memoir, Burke and Gunnell draw on anglophone and francophone work to analyze the African continent's distinctive basin-and-swell topography. Exploring topics such as landforms, bauxites and laterites, fission-track studies, climatic changes, volcanic rock distribution, hotspots, mantle plumes, and rifts, as well as deep and shallow mantle geophysics, ocean floor evolution, continental flooding, and offshore sediment deposition, the authors have pieced together a coherent, continent-wide reconstruction of landscape development during the past 200 million years. Two episodes of continental breakup and the formation of ocean floor were followed by erosion that reduced the continent to a low-elevation and low-relief African Surface by Late Cretaceous times. Africa's present-day topography developed mostly during the past 30 million years as the African Surface underwent swell uplift and climate changed radically after the Antarctic ice sheet first formed. Northern hemisphere glaciation and related Sahara initiation 3 million years ago were Africa's most recent great changes."--Publisher's website.