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The Physical Geography of North America. Edited by ANTONY ORME Oxford: OUP, 2002 608 pp. £79.99. ISBN 0 19 511107 9
If you want an up-to-date, authoritative, comprehensive and very readable review of the state of scientific: knowledge and research concerning North American physical geography - this is it. Perhaps a little unusually, this text examines the extra-tropical landscapes of the North American plate that stretch from the Tropic of Cancer north to the Arctic Ocean rather than separating North and South America at the isthmus of Panama, on the basis that the tectonic structure, the climatic regime and the human impacts make the North American region as defined distinctly different.
Thirty-one authors contribute to the text that is divided into three sections. The first section (the Systematic Framework - Chapters 1-12) looks initially at the tectonic and climatic landscape evolution of North America particularly since the beginning of the Quaternary (Chapters 1-4), before examining the modern climatic, hydrologie and biogeographic environment. These provide the...