The study of geomorphology is an academic discipline devoted to the explanation of the earth's surface relief and to an understanding of the processes which create and modify landforms. In recent years, geomorphological textbooks have concentrated almost exclusively upon an examination of the detailed processes which take place in the weathering of rocks and the transport of debris as landforms are created and destroyed. An academic journal, Earth surface processes even takes its title from this aspect of geomorphology. The study of processes has enabled great progress to be made in geomorphology as process studies lend themselves admirably to measurement and modelling techniques. However, there is also a broader, regional aspect to geomorphological studies which has been rather neglected during the past two or three decades; the disillusionment which many physical geographers felt in the 1950s about the denudation chronology approach led eventually to the virtual abandonment of wider-scale studies.

A plea for more attention to large-scale geomorphology was made by Gregory in The nature of physical geography in 1985, but most geomorphologists, with a few notable exceptions, have avoided consideration of geomorphology on a large scale or on a regional basis. One notable occasion when broader issues were discussed was the symposium held by the British Geomorphological Research Group on ‘Mega-geomorphology’ and published in 1983. It is this background which provoked the author to provide a text which would cover this field of study and hopefully to interest students of all ages in the broader aspects of geomorphology.