Evolution of Geomorphology Since the Late 19th Century
Since the 1940s, physiography had been the sole interest of geologists, since geomorphology was not part of the geography curriculum at Quebec universities at that time. Geography departments were not set up until the late 1940s and geomorphology publications first appeared in the mid-1950s. Geographers were drawn more to dynamic geomorphology than to physiography. The institutionalization of geomorphology began in the mid-1960s, whereas the 1970s marked the “golden age” of geomorphology, when the university network was expanded, laboratories built, and descriptive geomorphology superseded by its quantitative counterpart. During the 1970s and 1980s, research in all fields of dynamic geomorphology proliferated. At the same time a large number of geomorphologists were hired by government agencies and engineering and environmental firms to carry out regional inventories. The use of PCs in the mid-1980s and GIS from the early 1990s, combined with the availability of more sophisticated Earth observation tools, led to the emergence of a new kind of geomorphology focused on process modelling management. However, the recent closure of several university physical geography programs in the Quebec university system has cast a shadow over the future of geomorphology, which now depends on the optimization of observation, measurement and prediction tools.