Morphologic attributes of the contemporary geomorphic landscape and its component form elements evolve from the activity of environment-regulated process domains acting in the present, and local and regional-scale process rates governed by conditions external and internal to geomorphic systems. These process–response systems establish landscape characteristics in equilibrium with the movement, storage, and transfer of energy and matter between interrelated and interdependent components of the system. Characteristics of geomorphic landscapes also evolve through time, suggesting that conditions of equilibrium and disequilibrium between opposing forces persist in the process–form adjustment. In certain instances, therefore, landscapes and their constituent landforms inherit the imprint of past process activities, and still others are relics of processes no longer active in the present <...>

Geomorphology, the study of landforms and their formative processes, is a multidisciplinary field most strongly associated with the geographical and geological sciences. It encompasses numerous subfields of specialization that are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Like all disciplines, what geomorphology is like today derives in part from the practitioners, ideas, controversies, and events involved in its development. This paper presents a brief perspective and overview of the history of geomorphology as an introduction to the subsequent chapters in the volume, each of which focuses on a specific period of the discipline's history or on concepts that have figured prominently in its past development or current status. A brief summary of the following 18 papers in this volume provides insight into the range of ideas and methods that are engaged in the theory and practice of geomorphology. The volume as a whole provides historical and thematic context for the subsequent volumes in the Treatise on Geomorphology.

After a well is drilled, a string of geophysical instruments (called a sonde) is placed into the borehole to record the geophysical properties of the subsurface strata. The data are digitally recorded in a nearby logging facility (commonly a logging vehicle for land-based rigs) and transferred to a paper log and/or saved as a digital .las data file. It is very common to get both a digital and paper copy of the well.

This course is an introduction to some of the balkanized family of techniques and philosophies that reside under the umbrella of inverse theory. In this section we present the central threads that bind all of these singular items together in a harmonious whole. That's impossible of course, but what we will do is provide a point of view that, while it will break from time-to-time, is good enough to be going on with. The goal of this chapter is to introduce a real inverse problem and explore some of the issues that arise in a non-technical way. Later, we explore the resulting complications in greater depth <...>