Zoogeomorphology: Animals as Geomorphic Agents

Zoogeomorphology is the first and only book of its kind to examine the role animals play in sculpting the Earth’s surface, thus integrating the ideas and literature from the fields of geomorphology and wildlife ecology. Dr. Butler describes how animals of all kinds–from small insects to large mammals such as elephants–can act as agents of erosion, transportation, and deposition of sediment. He discusses specific processes associated with the diversity of animal influences in geomorphology: burrowing and denning, nesting, lithophagy and geophagy, wallowing and trampling, food caching, excavating for food, and dam building by beavers.