In May 1962 the McGill University Savanna Research Project was established and has been conducted since that date in the Department of Geography, McGill University and in the savannas of the Rupununi District, British Guiana and the Territorio do Rio Branco, Brazil. It is generally recognised that although a very wide range of theory has been propounded to explain the nature and origin of savannas, no one has yet brought forward a single convincing viewpoint which has met with universal acceptance. One reason for this is that the majority of theories extant are based upon inadequate field data with almost a total lack of experimental evidence. The McGill University Savanna Research Project was set up for the purpose of initiating an experimental and observational field programme which it was hoped would shed light upon the ecological relations of the savanna, and would ultimately enable an explanation to be made of the nature and distribution of the savanna vegetation of the region.

This study is based on twenty weeks field work in the Caribbean during the months of May, June, July, August and September, 1963. Three weeks of this time were spent working in the libraries of the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica and St. Augustine, Trinidad and of the University of Puerto Rico at San Juan, Puerto Rico. Brief visits were made to other islands, for example Tobago, St. Lucia, Martinique, Antigua and St. Maarten, for comparative purposes. The research project was undertaken as part of the McGill University Geography Department Tropical Programme. In Barbados the Programme has emphasised research into land use and the development of peasant agriculture.

Labrador's coastal scenery is dominated by evidence of Pleistocene glaciation. Before World War II only a few, generally bread studies touching on this subject bad been made in Labrador. From these the overwhelming effect of continental glaciation became clear. However, the chronology of glaciation had yet to be established, and little regional evidence bad been obtained to support existing hypotheses explaining the character and effects of Labrador-Quebec's glaciation. Expeditions like that of Vainö Tanner (1944) have shown that studies in detail or concentrated in small areas are essential if the deglaciation and emergence of coastal Labrador are to be understood.

Sugar cane has been the mainstay of the economy of Barbados since 1645 and it has, in spite of the vicissitudes of the sugar industry, maintained this unique position ever since; this can be realised from the fact that it contributes over 90 per cent of the annual income of the island (Macpherson, 1963, p. 75). The predominance of this crop has led to great interest being taken in measures by which a potential yield can be attained. The potential yield, according to Dillewijn (1952, p. xxii), is the maximum yield attainable given that the following five factors are fully satisfied: solar energy (heat and light), moisture (rainfall and irrigation), soil condition, availability of labour, and cultural methods. The potential yield, he states, is only of theoretical importance because the sugar industry is an economic enterprise, concerned with economic yield, which is generally lower than the potential yield. [...]

Since Captain James Cook's historic voyage in 1778, Alaskan glaciers have been described, mapped, and studied many times. Several expeditions have gone to Alaska for the sole purpose of studying glaciers. Of these field studies the most important were the Harriman Alaska Expedition of 1899 (Gilbert, 1903), the National Geographic Society's Alaskan Expeditions 1909, 1910 (Tarr and Martin, 1914), and the work of William O Field in 1931 and 1935 (Field, 1932 and 1937). [...]

The findings of this study are primarily based upon fieldwork, for the reason that only scanty written sources exist on the Lower Yuna. This dearth of background information on which to build sometimes results in an unsophisticated level of treatment and has made necessary the inclusion of substantial descriptive and explanatory material in the form of expanded footnotes. [...]

The St. Lawrence River is one of the youngest of the world's great rivers. Much of its course below Lake Ontario traverses the floor of the Champlain Sea, a late-glacial marine embayment which flooded the lowland between the Canadian Shield and the Appalachian highland. [...]

The definition: An isochrone is a line connecting all the points equally distant in time from a given centre. (Gr. isos equal + chronos time). The purpose of the study: The purpose of this isochronic study is to determine the patterns of relative accessibility centred on the two cities of Winnipeg and Montreal. [...]

Most of the peninsula of Labrador-Ungava is within the belt of coniferous forests which extends around the world in northern latitudes, and the present study is on the forests and physiography around Goose Bay, Labrador, an area which has come into recent focus as the site of an important air base. This area, together with almost all of the rest of Canada, has been photographed from the air in recent years, and this has created a tremendous store of material which was formerly unavailable to the research worker due to the difficulty of travelling through the interior of this rough and sparsely settled country. Naturally, aerial photographs are of great value to scientists in various fields, and many projects are under way using this new source of information.

Missing pages. / The purpose of this thesis is to describe the everchanging relationship between man and the land on the Caribbean island of Antigua and to explain how human activities have been affected by the physical environment as well as factors of a social, economic or political nature. [...]