Engineering Geomorphology: Theory and Practice

Abstract

Most practicing engineering geologists have an intrinsic appreciation for applied (engineering) geomorphology, mostly from the innate recognition that landform analysis provides a valuable tool for deducing the real nature of subsurface geologic detail. In fact, does it not follow that the exposed surface of an individual geomorphic feature generally has its own subsurface “roots” in form and physical character? Peter Fookes has had a remarkably intense and productive, worldwide, fifty-year career in engineering geology, and he has never missed a beat in observing and passing his lessons learned on to us. Together with his general writings since the early 1970's, and his 2005 edition of Geomorphology for Engineering (with Mark Lee and George Milligan; reviewed by Hatheway [2006]), Fookes has now truly established and defined this very important sub-discipline of our profession (Fookes, 1997; Fookes and Voughe, 1986; Fookes and Perry, 1994; Fookes et al., 2005). Fookes is a self-admitted philosophical renegade, who, beginning in UK classical geological education, has transported his keenest observational powers from pre-Cretaceous terranes into Neogene surficial materials, where mankind has come to dwell. Fookes has gathered a cadre of diverse geoscience practitioners who have produced an organized mass of highly useful knowledge. The value of this text is that it bundles together so much useful technique, so that the perceptive reader …