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Please note that this session was withdrawn and is no longer available in the respective programme. This withdrawal might have been the result of a merge with another session.

SSS9.6

Soils as Sediment: integrating soil properties into erosion modeling (co-organized)
Convener: Nikolaus J. Kuhn  | Co-Conveners: David Dunkerley , Richard Cruse , Goswin Heckrath 

The movement of eroded soil along hillslopes represents a key element of landscape development, while it also contributes to the geochemical cycling of nutrients and Carbon. During detachment and transport eroded soil experiences a complex transition from surface soil to deposited sediment, whose properties depend on both original soil properties and transformation processes occurring during transport and deposition. Nevertheless eroded soil is often assumed to move as a bulk substance (of loose mineral grains) that maintains the properties of the original soil such as nutrient content throughout the detachment, transport and deposition process. However, inherent soil properties, such as aggregation and soil nutrient, pollutant as well as dead and living organic matter contents, interact and respond to physical forces during transport and after deposition. This strongly influences the sediment product and its environmental impact at the deposition site. Therefore, multiple simplified assumptions associated with the transport and deposition processes lead to false results when modeling soil detachment and transport impact on sediment deposition and sediment properties, as well as misrepresent the proxies in environmental archives. This session seeks to discuss the role of inherent soil properties for the behaviour and impact of sediment in wind and water erosion as well as ways to improve their representation in erosion models. We invite contributions on erosion processes, including soil detachment, transport, and deposition, with a focus on the relevance of sediment properties inherited from soils and their change over transport distance and time.