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Human Activities and the Tropical Rainforest pp 17–47Cite as

Landscape Sensitivity in the Humid Tropics — A Geomorphological Appraisal

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Part of the book series: GeoJournal Library ((GEJL,volume 44))

Abstract

The concept of landscape sensitivity was introduced into thinking about geomorphological systems by Brunsden and Thornes (1979) and has been developed in the context of environmental change (Thomas and Allison 1993). When resistance to change is exceeded by the magnitude of the disturbing forces the environmental system will adjust to create a new equilibrium. However, that equilibrium will not be attained if the frequency of high magnitude events, sufficient to cause further disturbance, is greater than the ‘relaxation time’ of the system. Some attributes of environmental systems, and equally, some areas of natural landscapes, are more sensitive to change than others. Both the materials (rocks, saprolites, sediments, soils) of the landscape and its morphological components and their arrangement (aspects of slope and landscape pattern) contribute to its sensitivity and when these, mainly landform, characteristics prove stable those parts of the landscape can be said to have a high ‘factor of safety’, a concept borrowed from engineering (Brunsden 1980, 1993; Brunsden and Thornes 1979). Where the landscape has very low resistance to change (high sensitivity) it may said to be ‘fragile’.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Science, University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA, Scotland

    Professor Michael F. Thomas

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  1. Professor Michael F. Thomas
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  1. The Palaeoecology Centre, The Queen’s University, BT9 6AX, Belfast, Northern Ireland

    Bernard K. Maloney

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© 1998 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Thomas, M.F. (1998). Landscape Sensitivity in the Humid Tropics — A Geomorphological Appraisal. In: Maloney, B.K. (eds) Human Activities and the Tropical Rainforest. GeoJournal Library, vol 44. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1800-4_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1800-4_2

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