William Morris Davis

William Morris Davis was an American geographer and geologist who developed the cycle of erosion, a model describing how landscapes change through stages over time.

Cycle of erosion: A model in which uplifted landscapes are progressively dissected and lowered by erosion. Davis’s best-known theory describes landscapes passing through youth, maturity, and old age.
Fluvial incision: The downward cutting of a river into its bed and underlying rock. River incision begins the valley-making sequence in Davis’s youthful landscapes.
Walter Penck: A German geomorphologist who argued that landforms reflect the interaction of uplift and erosion through time. Penck opposed Davis’s separation of uplift from the erosional stages that follow.
Nathaniel Shaler: An American geologist and educator who taught at Harvard University. Shaler taught Davis geology and helped direct his early scientific training.
Historical geology: The study of Earth’s history through rocks, fossils, and geological structures. Davis brought a historical, time-sequenced approach to interpreting landforms.
Geomorphology: The scientific study of landforms and the processes that shape them. Davis helped establish this field as a systematic study of landscape development.
Drainage basin: An area of land whose water drains to a shared outlet. Davis described how branching river networks organize the dissection of uplifted terrain.
Lester Charles King: A South African geomorphologist known for a model of landscape evolution centered on parallel slope retreat. King offered an alternative to Davis’s emphasis on valley deepening and peneplain formation.
Harvard University: A private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, founded in 1636. Davis studied and taught there, building much of his academic career.
Landscape evolution: The long-term change in the form and organization of Earth’s landscapes. Davis made landscape change through time a central problem for geomorphologists.

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Ellen Churchill SempleRelated: Davis was a leading contemporary in the American geographical community Semple helped build.