Exogenic Landforms of Europe

Abstract

At the end of the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth century, European scientists (e.g., Dokhuchayev, Penck and Passarge) drew attention to the relationships between relief and climatic changes during the geological past. Geomorphologists looked particularly at exogenic processes, especially glacial ones, and their role in landform development in Europe. In 1913, the French geographer de Martonne for the first time used the term climatic geomorphology [see Stoddart (1969)]. After World War II, climatic geomorphology, in which the spatial distribution of the exogenic relief forms and geomorphological processes was controlled by climatic/physiographic zonation, became a focus of interest for some European schools of geomorphology [see Cholley (1950), Tricart and Cailleux (1965)]. The same idea was proposed in the USSR by Shukhin (1954), who studied geomorphological complexes in different types of geographical environment. Büdel (1969) divided climatic geomorphology into (1) climatic/dynamic aspects of the relationships between exogenic processes and climate and (2) climatic/genetic aspects of the relationships between relief and contemporary or former climatic conditions.