The late quaternary geomorphic history of the Kaugel Valley, Papua New Guinea

Abstract

The attention of geomorphologists has, for many decades, been focused on the more temperate areas of the earth's surface. This orientation, understandable as it is, has resulted in relative neglect of those zones which experience climatic extremes. The humid tropics, and especially their mountainous parts, are particularly under-represented in geomorphic literature, despite the efforts of some early workers. Papers presented to a conference on climatic geomorphology in 1927 (Thorlecke, 1927a) included some on the tropics (e.g. Thorbecke, 1927b). Other German workers who were concerned with the humid tropics were Behrmann (1917, 1928), Freise (1932, 1935) and Sapper (1914, 1935). Among early French workers de Martonne (1940, 1946) contributed several papers concerned with the geomorphology of the tropics. More recent Freich geomorphologists (e.g. Birot, 1968; Tricart, 1972) have worked in the humid tropics and have reported their findings using climatic geomorphology as a framework. Others (e.g. Ollier, 1959; Berry and Ruxton, 1961; Thomas, 1969) have worked on tropical geomorpholog/ without such a framework. Thus, in the last decade there has been a significant increase in the number of contributions on the humid tropics.