Landforms and time

Although there is available an increasingly large number of precise, scientific measurements of geological time, great expertise is essential for sampling, analysis, and interpretation. Although most dating techniques are specialized skills in themselves, it is evident to the geomorphologist that he cannot use dates without circumspection and that therefore some awareness of the nature of these methods and their limitations is necessary. A technique currently under investigation which might, if accepted as a viable dating method provides invaluable dates for landform interpretation, is the study of thermoluminescence. There is the growing realization that one cannot tell whether a landform is young or old simply by looking at its shape, and that there is a need for some independent indication of how forms and processes have changed over decades, centuries, or millennia. Intensified interest in the testimony of sediments, soils, and plants is a trend and likely to lead to a greater precision in the study of sequences in landform changes.