1.14 Systems and Complexity in Geomorphology

Abstract

Landscapes are complex systems on (and in) which a great number of geomorphological processes operate, and have operated, occasionally singly, most often in riotous combination. Thus the geomorphologist can still only explain landscapes, and predict the results of landscape change, in rather vague and general ways. Landscape models that attempt to represent these many interacting processes seem doomed to ever more intractable complication and to ever-decreasing comprehensibility. However, in recent decades, insights from work on self-organizing complex systems (employing the systems approach, and building upon the discovery of fractals and deterministic chaos) suggest that the observable complexity of landscapes need not imply an equivalent underlying complexity. Rather, whole-system complexity may arise emergently, from relatively simple – but very many – ‘local’ interactions. Landscape models that are based on this insight, such as cellular automata models, are able to realistically simulate many aspects of landscape appearance and behavior. This suggests that landscapes may indeed behave as self-organizing complex systems: that underlying the complexity of landscape form and process, there is a generative simplicity.