M-47. Sahyadri – The Great Escarpment of the Indian Subcontinent (Patterns of Landscape Development in the Western Ghats) – Vol. 1 & 2 (image of only Vol.I)

This Memoir is aimed at presenting the morphology and long-lived uplift history of the Western Ghats (known by the name Sahyadri in early Indian literature), the elevated relief barrier bordering the Western Continental Margin of India. It is a world class landform comparable to many other well-known rifted margins of the world. Emphasis of the papers in the volume are on rifting, scarp retreat on a grand scale, and the geoinorphological and lithospheric after-effects of uplift, causing the removal of large quantities of weathered material and their deposition in marginal sedimentary basins. All of these are factors of great significance in the evolution of the South Indian landscape. Processes, physical, chemical and biological are considered and interlinked within the framework of geological time, thus providing a synthesis which has important implications for the distribution pattern of rain-bearing monsoonic winds and soil geography, on which so much of Indian agriculture depends.

A consolidated bibliography is given at the end of the Memoir and is the first of its kind for the Western Continental Margin of India. The Memoir should serve as a port of entry to any one interested in pursuing research on landscape development in peninsular India, or in using the Indian example as a reference for understanding the configuration of other elevated continental margins around the world.