Complexity, selectivity, and evolution in Earth surface systems: towards a unified framework

Earth surface systems display persistent patterns, directional change, and differential survival of forms that parallel evolutionary processes. Recent developments in complexity science and Earth system theory provide a basis for understanding these dynamics without invoking biological teleology. This paper synthesizes emerging work on abiotic variation–selection–retention (VSR) processes and argues that complexity provides the generative context within which selective pressures operate. Earth surface systems are characterized by numerosity, multiphasicity, hierarchical organization, feedbacks, and nonlinearity, producing self-organized, emergent structures, and multiple stable states. Within this framework, four modes of abiotic selection – gradient, resistance, network, and thermodynamic – favour configurations that are efficient, stable, or persistent. Integrating these selective mechanisms with concepts of attractors, goal functions, and historical contingency yields a unified account of Earth surface evolution. The synthesis clarifies how landscapes and environmental systems generate, filter, and retain form through time, and offers a conceptual bridge between biological and abiotic evolutionary thinking with implications for geomorphology, pedology, hydrology, ecology, and climate science.