Geomorphological Processes and Their ActivityAuthor(s): Barbara KennedySource: Area, Vol. 10, No. 1 (1978), p. 77Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20001305 .

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Geomorphological processes and their activity 77

Geomorphological processes and their activity

A report of the annual conference of the British Geomorphological Research Group, held in Aberystwyth, 28-30 October 1977.

The conference proceedings and papers were divided between hills, rivers and the seashore, both physically and in terms of their contents. Certainly the most convincing demonstration of the activity of processes was that provided by the local waves on Sunday morning, when they illustrated quite admirably John Lewin's description of the local coastal erosion problems: indeed, those conference members who had been booked into a seafront hotel were definitely relieved that the field trip and demon stration had been reserved for the last day. In the paper sessions, however, only Pat Sargeant (Nature Conservancy) ventured to the ocean's brim with his discussion of the management problems posed by different coastal environments.

The paper sessions themselves were held well above the high-tide mark, in the Department of Geography's watchtower on the hill. Even this site must have appeared rather tame to Graham Butterfield (QMC), whose studies of aeolian soil transport rates were based on work in the High County of the South Island of New Zealand.

Others interested in soil erosion problems were Roy Morgan (Silsoe)-with an exceed ingly entertaining account of the realities of life on the supposedly non-erodible soils of Bedfordshire-and Katy Rowntree (Queen's, Belfast), who was filling the ' M. J. Kirkby Memorial' slot with an account of the modelling of the changes in soil aggregate characteristics and, presumably, erodibility that may follow the replace

ment of trees by grassland. The fluvial inputs into the system were both dominant and various. They ranged

from the more or less theoretical discussions of John Thornes (LSE)-sub-titled 'decimate your water-quality data and all will be well '-and Jim Petch (Salford)-an

exhortation to abandon the sinful and misleading practices of linking land use and water quality data via multiple regression equations-to a series of discussions of real live streams, including J. B. Ellis (Middlesex) on the variations of pollution from a variety of sources in the Welsh Harp Reservoir area, G. E. Petts (Dorset Inst.

Higher Educ.) on problems of changing channel efficiency downstream from reservoirs and Malcolm Newson (IOH) with the latest on the Plynlimon catchment and, in particular, its various artificial drainage systems: thankfully, and establishing a new BGRG all-comers record, East Twin Brook was not mentioned. The whole conference was concluded by an inspection of two of the local rivers (discussed the previous day in the paper by P. Wolfenden and J. Lewis (Aberystwyth) in terms of the evidence for sediment dispersion patterns obtained from the heavy metal analyses of mining

wastes) including that notorious stretch which persists in meandering despite the best efforts of the local authority to bulldoze it straight.

All in all, both a varied and enjoyable programme, but the last word perhaps rests with Malcolm Newson and his observation that, as ever, there were those with models (but no data) and data (but no models): could we not arrange a computer dating system ?

Barbara Kennedy University of Manchester

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