ABSTRACT
The study of hillslopes is a central element of geomorphology. Many authors (for example Scheidegger, 1961a; Young, 1972; Selby, 1982a; Abrahams, 1986) have pointed to the ubiquity of hillslopes over the earth's land surface to indicate the overall importance of their study, and Chorley (1964a) demonstrated that many of the major methodological disputes in geomorphology have been focused on hillslopes. An example is the debate in the latter part of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries on how landscapes change through time which essentially reduces to a question of the manner of hillslope evolution. Paradoxically, Carson and Kirkby (1972, p.l) were able to point to the comparative neglect of hillslopes when compared to the level of study accorded to other geomorphic features. These authors identified several factors contributing to this comparative neglect, not least being the very ubiquity of hillslopes which, if ignored, reduces the significance of any study and, if faced, raises massive sampling problems. They argued that geomorphologists have preferred to study simpler features, particularly those on which processes operate to effect more rapid change than is common on many hillslopes.
