ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on long-term landform development and the vestiges of past landscapes that survive in all parts of the globe. It considers palaeoplains of various kinds (erosion surfaces, peneplains, pediplains and panplains, etchplains, and exhumed surfaces) that survive tens to hundreds of millions of years. It demonstrates the nature of exhumed palaeoplains and landforms (such as reef knolls) that, having been buried beneath a cover of sediments, are later re-exposed. It then considers stagnant landscapes, geomorphic backwaters where little erosion has occurred and the land surface has been little altered for millions of years or far longer. The chapter then discusses several ideas concerning the cyclical nature of land-surface development, including the views of William Morris Davis and Lester King, as well as more modern ideas linking geomorphic processes with plate tectonics. The chapter concludes with a discussion of evolutionary geomorphology, which casts aside the notions of indefinitely repeated cycles and steady states, arguing instead for non-actualistic, directional change in land-surface history, with contingency playing a role in the evolution of each continental block.
