Catchments are important as natural units for hydrological and ecosystem research. (i) Hydrology, (ii) soil sciences, and (iii) bioscience are the main disciplines describing the abiotic and biotic processes of such complex landscape systems. Ecosystem studies often regard the ecosystem as an equilibrium of driving forces, structures, and processes. Changes in the environment e.g. by land use or climate changes lead to changes in the equilibrium between different processes and shift triggering thresholds, creating novel and frequently unexpected processes responses. These trigger transient conditions act on the ecological development, in the hydrological response and in the nutrient flux of the catchment. A special attention is given to fast land use changes such as those resulting from forest fires and urban sprawl, that may result in unpredictable catastrophic responses. The qualitative and quantitative assessment of the manifold consequences of environmental change constitutes a challenge both for conceptual and experimental research, together with the risk mitigation and adaptation strategies and techniques.

The oral and poster session aims for establishing a forum for scientists from different key disciplines (e.g. soil science, hydrology and bioscience) to share their experiences on ecosystem changes and hydrological response. We solicit contributions to the following topics (but not limited to):
• Studies on ecological development, nutrient fluxes and hydrological response in changing environments,
• Consequences of environmental change for soil conditions at catchment scale,
• Impact of future climate change to mature systems,
• Studies on the impacts of fast global change processes on hydrological response at various scales,
• Landscape and catchment evolution,
• Modelling of adapting hydrological systems,
• Ecosystem development and modelling,
• Development of mitigation and adaptation strategies to deal with changes in flooding risk.

Solicited speaker:
Tammo Steenhuis, tammo[at]cornell.edu