J.T. Jutson and the work of the wind in shaping the landscape

Abstract

For a brief period about a century ago, reputable scientists gave credence to the idea that wind was capable of regional planation. Among them was J.T. Jutson, whose publications exerted considerable influence both in Australia and overseas. He differentiated between deflation and corrasion (sand-blasting) and in 1914 attributed major as well as minor landscape features to their activity. He ascribed the westward migration of salinas and the shaping of associated rock platforms to the wind as well as to the extension of valleys that were incised into the lateritised Old Plateau and that coalesced to form the New Plateau of Western Australia. But local and overseas colleagues drew his attention to the primacy of rivers in shaping even desert landscapes, and by 1934 Jutson had realised that running water was almost solely responsible for the New Plateau.