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Maps are integral components of research in geomorphology and Quaternary geology. Visual presentation of the spatial and temporal distribution of a phenomenon often provides clues to the process(es) that generated the phenomenon. Compiling information on maps, interpreting spatial patterns, and using standard topographic maps were fundamental parts of the undergraduate experience. Why have such experiences been slowly disappearing from undergraduate curricula? How are geology majors taught map scale, map projections, and the pitfalls associated with the display of spatial information? Neglect in preserving the mapping tradition places the geology major at a disadvantage. The use of maps and mapping is undergoing a renaissance; use in the classroom has a bright future because of digital scanning, computer cartography, geographic information systems (GIS), and virtual reality. Pen and ink techniques should be relegated to museums. Pencil sketches can be scanned and perfect products generated every time. These techniques, however, do not eliminate the need for basic map knowledge such as scale, projections, and generalization. What assumptions about map projections have been built into the software? How are spatial data and attribute data integrated into the resultant map in a geographic information system (GIS)? Because the application of virtual reality to geomorphic processes looms on the horizon, geologists must recognize how the current spatial revolution can help with the assessment of geologic phenomena and teach students to function with the new technology.

H.L. Fairchild's words from the 1904 Geological Society of America Bulletin remain appropriate today: "Geologists have been too generous in allowing other people to make their philosophy for them". Geologists have quietly followed a methodological trinity involving (1) inspiration by analogy, (2) impartial and critical assessment of hypotheses, and (3) skepticism of authority (prevailing theoretical constraints or paradigms). These methods are described in classical papers by Quaternary geologists and geomorphologists, mostly written a century ago. In recent years these papers have all been criticized in modern philosophical terms with little appreciation for the late 19th century American philosophical tradition from which they arose. Recent scholarly research, however, has revealed some important aspects of that tradition, giving it a coherence that has largely been underappreciated as 20th century philosophy of science pursued its successive fads of logical positivism, critical rationalism, relativism, and deconstructivism -- for all of which "science" is synonymous with "physics". Nearly all this ideology is geologically irrelevant. As philosophy of science in the late 20th century has come to be identical with philosophy of analytical physics, focused on explanations via ideal truths, much of geology has remained to its classical doctrines of commonsensism, fallibilism, and realism. In contrast to the conceptualism and the reductionism of the analytical sciences, geology has emphasized synthetic thinking: the continuous activity of comparing, connecting, and putting together thoughts and perceptions. The classical methodological studies of geological reasoning all concern the formulation and testing of hypotheses. Analysis does not serve to provide the ultimate answers for intellectual puzzles predefined by limiting assumptions imposed on the real world. Rather, analysis in geology allows the investigator to consider the consequential effects of hypotheses, the latter having been suggested by experience with nature itself rather than by our theories of nature. These distinctions and methods were described in G.K. Gilbert's papers on "The Inculcation of Scientific Method by Example" (1886) and "the Origin of Hypotheses" (1896). Portions were elaborated in T.C. Chamberlin's "Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses" (1890) and his "method of the Earth Sciences" (1904); in W.M. Davis's "Value of Outrageous Geological Hypotheses" (1926); and in D. Johnson's "Role of Analysis in Scientific Investigation" (1933). American Quaternary geology and geomorphology have their philosophical roots in the pragmatic tradition, enunciated most clearly by C.S. Peirce, now recognized as the greatest American philosopher and considered by Sir Karl Popper to be one of the greatest philosophers of all time. Quaternary geology and geomorphology afford numerous examples of Peirce's "method" of science, which might be termed "the critical philosophy of common sense". The most obvious influence of pragmatism in geology, however, has largely been conveyed by the tradition of its scientific community. The elements of this tradition include a reverence for field work, a humility before the "facts" of nature, a continuing effort "to discriminate the phenomena observed from the observer's inference in regard to them", a propensity to pose hypotheses, and a willingness to abandon them when their consequences are contradicted by reality.

This paper builds on the contribution of relative rock resistance to contrasts in the relief of Britain, to establish the contribution of other factors. These include the slope of the major rivers towards the sea, itself in part a function of the size of material eroded from the headwater uplands and thus of their lithology and the steepness of their valleyside slopes. The pattern of denudational unloading and thus of isostatic uplift is mapped and compared with actual mean altitude. It is shown that the sum of predicted isostatic uplift and local base-level is closely related to the current mean altitude of our uplands. The predicted mean height based on the six equations for each rock resistance class relating mean altitude to river distance can also be compared with actual mean elevation. This shows positive departures which are most readily explained by neotectonic uplift, notable in the Scottish Highlands, the Alston Block of the northern Pennines and Fforest Fawr in South Wales. Negative departures may be due to relative neotectonic subsidence, as in Buchan, where there is coincidence with positive gravity anomalies. However, most negative departures can be linked with severe glacial erosion, especially in such areas as westernmost Scotland, the Lake District, the Vale of Belvoir and the Wash/Fens Basin where evidence for deep glacial erosion is already strong. Regional height differences related to the major structural regions of Britain are calculated; they make a smaller contribution to differences in average elevation, and thus to the overall relief of Britain.

Sand-dominated ridge-form anabranching rivers on the Kimberley Plateau in northwestern Australia are a new type of alluvial channel system not previously described or explained in detail. This paper examines the morphology, sedimentology and stratigraphy of this type of river, and proposes mechanisms for their formation and maintenance. Alternating with relatively narrow, bedrock reaches of valley are wider, depositional, alluvial reaches that support roughly parallel, very elongated, steep-sided and treed sandy ridges of approximately floodplain height. These ridges subdivide the total flow system into remarkably straight, canal-like, anabranching channels. In this seasonally arid environment there is an abundance of riparian vegetation, in places growing chaotically over wider sections of stream bed. It is proposed here that the formation of ridges results in a reduction of flow resistance with an increase in depth. The ridges concentrate the flow and compensate for the less efficient flow conditions associated with these well-vegetated alluvial reaches; trees generally do not survive on the bed of the higher-energy channels. Enhanced velocities and increased bed shear act to maintain or increase water and sediment flux in these alluvial reaches. The formation of the channels and intervening ridges may be aided by the development of double flow helices in each anabranch, similar to that described for much smaller ridge features observed in laboratory flumes. Anabranches are also observed having formed by channel avulsion scouring new channels into adjacent floodplains, particularly in widened sections of valley near tributary junctions.

This paper reports on soil losses from pipe networks in irrigated fields in the Ebro Basin, Spain. The factors encouraging the evolution of pipes are the number of irrigations, the type of crop, the existence of more impervious layers in the C soil horizon and the hydraulic gradient. The water used for irrigation is a low-salinity water, frequently unsaturated in calcite and dolomite. It therefore dissolves some of the soil carbonate and takes calcium from the exchange complex, thus contributing to soil dispersion and erosion. From monitoring the hydromorphological behaviour of two pipe networks, soil loss from the affected plots is estimated at 3 t ha−1yr−1. The evolution of piping causes important losses of soil and water and can lead to the abandonment of farm land.

A morphological study of the Baie des Chaleurs area, between northern New Brunswick and the Gaspé Peninsula (eastern Canada), leads to the identification of several types of palaeolandforms in the landscapes of the northeastern Appalachians. One of them, the exhumed sub-Carboniferous palaeosurface, was recognized along the shores of the Baie des Chaleurs, around the western part of the Carboniferous basin — the Maritimes Basin — which underlies the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. By analyzing the conditions of its exhumation and its relationships with escarpments limiting the higher planation surfaces of inner Gaspésie and western New Brunswick, it was possible to identify recent deformations. These are en bloc tilting and uplift, flexuring, and faulting; they partly reflect the reactivation of Carboniferous or older structures. The study of palaeolandforms has already proved to be an appropriate method for reconstructing the morphological evolution of basement areas. In this paper, it is applied to the study of the evolution of an emerged part of the eastern Canada rifted margin after the opening of the North Atlantic Ocean.