of historical geomorphology, which, in turn,
Quantitative
geomorphology
Hervé Piégay
University of Lyon, France
Today, “quantitative geomorphology” could be
considered redundant, as geomorphology is
fundamentally based on quantifications. In fact,
quantitative geomorphology refers to a specific
way of exploring geomorphological questions
and takes its roots in the early debates between
qualitative and quantitative approaches. When
reviewing the use of the term “quantitative
geomorphology” in the scientific literature, it
predominantly appears during two periods: the
1950–1960s and the 2000s.
The first period includes pioneer researchers
such as Horton, Strahler, Morisawa, or Chor-
ley, who first published contributions entitled
“quantitative geomorphology … ” or “quantitative
analysis … ,” and argued the need to think about
processes and explain how forms are related to
processes.
The pioneer quantitativists defended the need
to move from “qualitative” to “quantitative”
geomorphology to study the spatial organization
of forms (stream ordering, stream network, and
basin characters) as related to driving factors
(mainly hydraulics), by developing process-based
and systemic approaches to understanding land-
scape complexity; these are the theoretical
framework for the discipline today (Church
2013). This period is seen as the “golden age,”
wherein emerged the concepts of “dynamic geo-
morphology” and “functional geomorphology.”
These concepts developed fairly independently
The International Encyclopedia of Geography.
Edited by Douglas Richardson, Noel Castree, Michael F. Goodchild, Audrey Kobayashi, Weidong Liu, and Richard A. Marston.
© 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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gave birth to paleoenvironmental studies and
geoarcheology.
A second quantitative revolution occurred in
the 2000s with the emergence of new geographic
data and expanding computer capacities accessi-
ble to scientific teams around the world. Nearly
five decades after the pioneers of geomorphol-
ogy, these new contributions consistently refer
to “quantitative geomorphology,” such as in
a special issue published in Géomorphologie in
2011, entitled “quantitative hydrogeomorphol-
ogy” that described the emergence of a new
scientific era, similarly argued by Marcus and
Fonstad (2010) in “Remote Sensing of Rivers,
The Emergence of a Subdiscipline in the River
Sciences.”
Qualitative information (mainly visual obser-
vation) is biased by the perception and acuity
of the observer, his/her experiences, memories,
beliefs, and/or attachment to a given theory,
as discussed in the case of the Davisian theory
of cycles of erosion (Rhoads and Thorn 1996).
Qualitative information that supports shared
truth is limited to observable facts, even though
a large set of them is not visible or is difficult to
observe. The qualitative approach is also limited
to those processes that are notably changing,
many of which are not observable without mea-
surements over time. Quantification is necessary
to simulate processes in order to understand
and generalize cause and effects based on order
of magnitude and changes in volume or mass
(e.g., sediment budgeting, appropriate timescale
estimates). A qualitative approach is often linked
to an inductive approach, so that the observer
lets the field speak without formulating any
preliminary hypothesis (Rhoads and Thorn
QUA N TI TAT I VE GEO M O R P H O L O G Y
1996). Even if a qualitative approach guided
by a critical attitude, multiple-hypotheses, and
deductive reasoning reached a truth shared by a
large set of people, it would still be limited by a
lack of precision and set of facts. Convergence
of evidence is also a critical issue to give truth to
interpretation. In this domain, quantification is
useful as it can provide a wider set of solutions
and make interpretations more robust.
Quantification is based on data collected
by instruments. Quantitative geomorphology
supports the idea that objectivity should be
reinforced by quantification, reliable and precise
data, and shared procedures to avoid any bias.
It is a way to gather more precise information
that can be shared by observers. Such factual
information can then be interpreted to refor-
mulate questions so as to design a new research
strategy to gather additional facts. It allows one
to distinguish and interpret facts and introduces
a strong experimental framework: the so-called
deductive approach of hypothesis validation.
If quantification can be done in different
ways, two complementary strategies are often
observed, with sometimes disciplinary debates
to consider which one is the most valuable, one
focusing on physical laws and the other explor-
ing the Earth complexity using mainly statistics.
Physics, mainly mechanics, aims to understand
the elementary laws controlling the evolution of
processes and forms, is mainly grain-based, and
is supported by in situ and ex situ experiments,
numerical models, and simulations. It simplifies
the real world to understand step by step how
it works. Earth complexity analysis is usually
more holistic, approaching Earth organization
and functioning by ordering, classifying, and
understanding factors by discriminating temporal
states and spatial units. For this type of analysis,
statistics has become important, similarly to
other integrative sciences such as ecology, to
explore complex systems.
2
Geomorphology now fundamentally relies
on quantification to answer different questions,
to characterize the magnitude and frequency
of events and critical geomorphic phenomena
(i.e., sediment transport, landslide), and to assess
the evolution and organization of forms and
their connections. Quantification is founded
in physics. It is made possible by technologi-
cal advances in optics, mechanics, electronics,
or geoinformatics, including geocomputing,
statistics, mathematical morphology, geometry,
modeling, remote sensing techniques, and geo-
graphic information systems (GIS). It deals with
dating, geopositioning, and imaging the Earth
surface and the water column using a set of
innovative techniques such as optical stimulated
luminescence (OSL), isotopes (U/Th isotopic
ratios, 14 C, 137 Cs, 210 Pb, etc.), airborne and
terrestrial LiDAR, various satellite and airborne
imagery (hyperspectral, hyperspatial, radar, etc.),
ground penetrating radar (GPR), and ground
sensors such as radio frequency identification
(RFID) and cameras (Thorndycraft, Benito, and
Gregory 2008; Carbonneau and Piégay 2012). In
this field, temporal resolution is also becoming
significantly improved, notably with ground sen-
sors that record phenomena almost continuously
(e.g., a few images per second for ground video
cameras to a few images per year with the Pléi-
ade 1A and 1B satellites with a spatial resolution
equivalent to the conventional ortho-rectified
photos provided by national agencies (0.7 m
versus 0.2–0.5 m)) or UAV technologies. With
the development of the Internet, more and more
state services offer archived data online, increas-
ing the data availability for research purposes.
These sites include online metadata/data catalogs
and online geotreatment tools or tool packages
to explore geomorphic systems within GIS.
The computer revolution not only allows for
more complex modeling in terms of hydraulic
simulations but also provides new techniques to

explore complex sets of data needing large com-
puter capacities (e.g., multiple-agent systems,
segmentations and classifications, analyses of
uncertainties based on probabilistic approaches
and randomization tests, etc.).
New techniques and new data provide new
insights. There is now the ability to more inten-
sively observe fine sedimentary structures, topog-
raphy under forest cover, and river bathymetry, in
order to study processes which were not yet fully
examined (e.g., flux of wood, bank erosion dur-
ing a flood event, landslides or debris flows, etc.).
This has allowed us to widen our range of obser-
vations and our vision, which was extremely
limited in space and time by field-based
approaches. Traditionally field based, geomor-
phology is now reaching the point in its evolution
where remotely collected images are provid-
ing more data than field observations, opening
exciting prospects to explore processes and forms
not only at a local scale but at much wider scales
by combining observations and simulations. In
a certain way, geomorphologists not only base
their knowledge production on field observation
but also on remote sensing information, a com-
plementary perspective of observing Earth. In
widening our space and time framework, these
new data should improve our understanding on
how local observations can be generalized.
Methods promoted by reductionists devel-
oped in the 1950s are now being progressively
adapted for applications at larger spatial scales.
Reductionist quantitativists must now collab-
orate with holistic quantitativists to explore
phenomena in this big data era recognizing
geomorphology as a “system science.” This new big
data era more closely connects physicists with
statisticians, who explore Earth complexity from
two joined perspectives. It is influencing not
only functional/dynamic geomorphology but
also historical/evolutionary geomorphology as
shown by Thorndycraft, Benito, and Gregory
QUA NTITATIVE GEOMOR PHOL OGY
(2008) or illustrated by works such as Notebaert
et al. (2009) opening new bridges between these
two main branches of the discipline.
SEE ALSO: Big data; Cloud computing;
Digital elevation model and digital surface
model; Geocomputation; Geographic
information system; Geomorphological
mapping and geospatial technology; Modeling
uncertainty in digital elevation models; Models
in geomorphology; Photogrammetry: 3-D from
imagery; Quantitative methodologies;
Representation: 3-D; Representation: dynamic
complex systems; Synthetic aperture radar;
Technology; Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)
References
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Church, M. 2013. “Refocusing Geomorphology:
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Marcus, W.A., and M.A. Fonstad. 2010. “Remote
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Notebaert, B., G. Verstraeten, G. Govers, and
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