Abstract
Many recently initiated landforms directly or indirectly owe their origin to man, but the genesis of several recent South Australian features — gullies, landslides, dunes — is far more complex than has been supposed. In cases where it proves possible to date precisely the specific landform there is a time-lag between the event presumed to have made the land surface vulnerable to erosion and the actual initiation of the forms. This is curious, for climatic events of a magnitude equal to or greater than those to which landform initiation is demonstrably related occurred between settlement by Europeans and landform development. This anomaly may be due to the gradual deterioration of soil structure consequent to removal of vegetation and loss of organic matter in the soil. But it may also be related to the nonuniform spatial distribution of rainfall: heavy rain at a recording station does not necessarily imply rain of equal magnitude or intensity in the surrounding areas. The precise seasonal timing of the rains is also significant.
The relation of man's activities to the recent landforms investigated is tested by examining the continuity of development of various features: if a certain landform is due to human interference in the particular region then there ought to be no example of that type predating human occupation; if man has merely accelerated the rate of development there should be a time-continuum of forms. Both acceleration and initiation by man's activities occurred in South Australia. There is no evidence to relate these factors to any of the climatic trends so far detected for the region.
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Twidale, C.R. The origin of recently initiated exogenetic landforms, South Australia. Geo 1, 227–240 (1976). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02407509
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02407509