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In this essay, I attempt to chronicle and assess the position of climatology in American geography during the past one hundred years with emphasis on the role of papers published in the Annals. The approach I take is influenced by my interest in the decline of physical geography, including climatology, beginning in the last half of the 1800s ( ) to its resurgence in the 1950s and 1960s, and reviews of the climatology literature that have appeared recently (e.g., ). I discuss climatology in American geography in three loosely defined periods. The first is the formative era in which physical geography, including climatology, was a dominant part of our discipline, and physical geographical conditions such as climate were considered determinants of human affairs. In the middle (regional) era, the physical geographic environment, including climatology, was largely taken to be a static physical milieu or “stage” on which human activity occurred, simply to be described by geographers as part of regional analyses. The modern era, which begins just after the Second World War, is a period of increasing diversity of subject matter and method in climatology within geography and in American geography generally. Today climatology enjoys a “growth industry” status that hardly could be imagined forty years ago. These changes did not occur in isolation but in the context of the scientific, technological, social, economic, and political conditions, and changes in which they were embedded, and the status of climatology as a field of study was an important part of the context. I also comment on the number of climatology papers published in the Annals, including a curious anomaly in the last decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a first-person narrative of a geographer in the United States regarding the geography program of the Office of Naval Research. First years of the program which was initiated in 1948; Role of the committee headed by Joseph A Russell, in establishing standards and guidelines; Inclusion of cultural geography; Focus on physical geography; Establishment of the Coastal Studies Institute.

Focuses on the implications of the decline of the interest in physical geography for the progress in geography in the U.S. Expansion of the field of geography; Development of geomorphology; Plan of the Geological Society of America to establish a Division of Geomorphology.

Explores the physiographic divisions of the U.S. Explanations concerning the need of natural divisions; Details of the work of the Association of American Geographers; Account of the designation by professor W. M. Davis of dominant factors in topography.

Focuses on training in the field of geomorphology. Graduate work in geography; Physiography of the U.S.