Discovering the rates at which landscapes change and the causes of these changes is a key current focus in geoscientific, environmental, ecological and archaeological research. The mechanisms are intricate involving many components – a complex of positive and negative feedback mechanisms, and scales varying from the solar system and global tectonics to the activities of microscopic organisms. In this book Andrew Goudie draws together the findings of many disparate disciplines (and of his own research) to present a coherent and structured account of what is known and what remains to be discovered about change and the variable rate of change in the shape and environment of the earth's surface. This is not a research monograph but a research synthesis presented in terms comprehensible to workers in a wide range of disciplines.