Aims
This module is designed to enable students to gain a conceptual, factual and practical understanding of the major landforms and processes in the world's extensive dryland regions, including an appreciation of how these forms and processes respond to environmental changes.

Learning outcomes
On completion of this module, students should be able to:

1) Assess how the relative and the absolute importance of different geomorphological agents (e.g. surface water, groundwater, wind) vary within and between the world's dryland regions;
2) Evaluate how these geomorphological agents have responded, and will continue to respond, to natural and anthropogenically-induced environmental changes.

Brief description
1) The context for dryland geomorphology
Drylands: definition, nature, extent and importance
Climatic and geological frameworks

2) Weathering forms and processes
Weathering agents: insolation, moisture, salt
Weathering products: soils, crusts and varnishes
The role of vegetation

3) Fluvial forms and processes
Slopes and pediments
Alluvial fans and gullies
River channels and floodplains
Pans and playas

4) Aeolian forms and processes
Aeolian bedforms, dunefields and sand seas
Aeolian dust

5) Dryland regions: extensions, contractions and change
Cenzoic environmental changes
Human impact and future changes