**1. Introduction**

266 Studies on Environmental and Applied Geomorphology

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In the past few decades interest in the environment has reached a peak as popular opinion has become aware of the extent of the human impact on natural systems. A proliferation of degrees has followed this wave of 'environmentalism', their focus has been on natural areas and the damage caused by human impacts. **Environmental geomorphology** is a special interaction of humans with the geographical environment which includes not only the physical constituents of the Earth, but also the surface of the Earth, its landforms and in particular the processes which operate to change it through time. This geographical environment can be investigated from several aspects:


To distinguish between the first two trends and the related disciplines, the terms (bio)ecology and geoecology are in use. The two concepts differ in handling the role of abiogenic and biogenic factors. In the past decade there was an intention to define geoecology as the study of abiotic factors and of issues concerning the functioning of the physical environment, while landscape ecology investigates the biogenic factors and problems of spatial organisation, structure. The far-reaching developments in the past one or two decades made landscape ecology become a wide theorethical-practical field of research, so the adaptation of international research results and educational experience is inevitable here too. The emerging science of landscape ecology is a tool for such studies and will be the cradle for advanced studies in the future.

Since the 1970s in the research of the physical environment two, frequently intertwining trends are prominent. One of them investigates the changes in the natural environment induced by human economic intervention (which are often undesirable) along with their counter effects. The other aims at the quantitative and qualitative survey of the resources and potentials of the physical environment and the evaluation of also regionally varying geographical potentials. **Anthropogenic geomorphology** is a new approach and practice to investigate our physical environment, because in the eighties the more and more urgent demands from society against geography - ever more manifest due to the scientific-technical revolution - underlined the tasks to promote efficiently the rational utilization of natural

**I**ntroduction to Anthropogenic Geomorphology 269

*Agriculture* is another social activity causing changes on the surface. *Agrogenic* impacts also

In contrast, the impacts of *tourism and sports* activities are rather new fields of study in

Although *warfare* is not a productive activity but has long-established surface impacts.

include transformation due to forestry.

anthropogenic geomorphology (Szabó et al., 2010).

(Bennett, M. R. - Doyle, P. 1999 modified by Dávid-Baros, 2006)

Fig. 1. Development and differentiate of Earth Sciences (including Athropogenic

geomorphology) and its connection with the environmental problems

resources and potentials, to achieve an environmental management satisfying social requirements and opportunities.

The demand for complex environmental research has grown, since this is the only way to determine the loadibility of nature and the consequence of loading, to maintain the stable equilibrium of landscape, to preserve and develop the quality of life, and to give a long-term prognosis for the purposeful exploitation of environmental resources and potentials. Applying new methods and theories, the geography of today attempts to elaborate concepts and methods primarily novel in attitude to match the complex problems. As most of the problems of environmental management are, by their essence, interconnected by causal relationships, the solutions are justified, to be sought in the framework where the complex interrelationships of the human environment can be revealed in an integrated manner. All these, of course, do not mean to give up the investigation into the individual components of the environment, but these should be coordinated by one or several programmes which guarantee the study of the inner unity and multifarious nature of environmental factors and the detection of their interactions and development trends. The resulting environmental models may provide a uniform framework for basic (theoretical) and practical purpose research. We are convinced that any of the partical factors can only be studied in entirety and successfully if its relationships are known in the environmental systems.

Researchers reviewing the geomorphological literature of the last 40 years will gain the impression that the perception of Man as a geomorphological agent is a fairly recent development. We deal with anthropogenic geomorphology and we think that in an integrative study of this type, mankind must be regarded directly as a geomorphological agent, for it has increasingly altered the conditions of denudation and aggradation of the Earth's surface.
