ABSTRACT

The relationship of landscapes and soils includes both dynamic and static components. Landscapes result from interaction of processes with materials that make up the uppermost part of the Earth’s crust. Climatic fluctuations, through their effects on soil development and erosion, can explain the presence of scarps, waterfalls, and stepped topography as superposed features on some of the old erosional landscapes of the humid and semi-humid Tropics. Factors and processes involved in the genesis and evolution of landscapes and soils can affect each other, sometimes synergistically and at other times antagonistically. A popular misconception is that the soils of the Amazon Basin, if cleared from vegetation and put into agricultural use, would soon turn into a brick-like material that would render them unusable for agriculture, and the region would turn into a desert. The establishment of the African surface would have been followed by a new period of weathering and development of the present soils.