A Bursting Landscape in the Middle of Portugal: Theories and Experiments by Georges Zbyszewski

Abstract

During the 1930s, the Portuguese dictatorship known as Estado Novo was determined the country should become industrialized, and one of the favoured economic sectors was mining. Therefore, the Service for Mining Prospecting was created in 1939, a public institution which was in charge of surveying and researching mineral resources. It was in this context that in 1946 Georges Zbyszewski (1909–1999), a French geologist working for the Portuguese Geological Survey, was entrusted with the supervision of geological work in a region of central mainland Portugal, known as the typhonic valley. In order to be able to make a complete study of the geology of the region, Zbyszewski needed to know the origin of the typhonic valley, and so he carried out some experiments with analogue models. Zbyszewski was the first geologist in Portugal to use analogue models in geological research, which seems to have been down to his early practice in France. Although, this use of analogue models in the context of experimental geology turned out to be a timely and idiosyncratic attempt with no real consequences for the practice of Portuguese geology at the time. Almost 40 years had to pass until Zbyszewski's pioneering work could bear fruit.