One of the greatest concerns facing earth and environmental scientists is how landscapes respond to present and future potential disturbances. This session will focus on how sediment (fine and coarse) systems react to natural and human-induced landscape disturbances over a range of space and time scales. This session solicits contributions that further our understanding of the impact of disturbances, such as changes in climate,land use (agriculture, forestry, mining, and urbanization), wildfires, and anthropogenic alterations in river channel morphology, on sediment transport and sediment quality. Contributions related to sediment and sediment-associated nutrient and contaminant transfers ranging spatially from hillslope scales to continental erosion and temporally from short-term event processes to longer term historical records are welcome.

Invited Presentations:

Olav Slaymaker (University of British Columbia, Canada):
The relative importance of relief, hydroclimate and human activity as drivers of environmental change in mountain regions

Stan Trimble (UCLA, USA):
Erosional effects of an extreme rainstorm on Coon Creek, Wisconsin, USA, August 2007

Gert Verstraeten (K. U. Leuven, Belgium):
Human impact on late-Holocene sediment transfers: typology, controlling factors and scaling issues