Chemical and physical weathering of rocks/sediments, and consequently soil formation or degradation, affect the cycle of elements from a local to global scale. The time over which natural chemical weathering and soil formation processes occur can usually not be reproduced by experimental studies. Soil chronosequences can provide information about the weathering regimes, soil morphogenesis and have greatly advanced our understanding of short- to long-term landscape processes.
Soils are also known to evolve in complex, often non-linear ways over thousands of years. This is because both type and intensity of soil forming processes change over this timescale, e.g. due to changes in climate or in vegetation. Consequently, soils may also contain palaeo-environmental information that is relevant for the evolution and process understanding.
Data and concepts about the behaviour of soil forming processes in time and space are necessary to perform soil and landscape modelling. Landscape Evolution Models (LEMs) are able to quantitatively simulate the three-dimensional (3D) development of landscapes and soils over time (4D). As a result, LEMs have the potential to test and visualise landscape and soil evolution hypotheses. When calibrated with the empirical soil weathering and erosion datasets, a LEM can formalize and relate fluxes to topographic position and climatic conditions.
The session welcomes papers about soil weathering rates, total denudation rates (including erosion processes), mineral formation and transformation rates, chronosequences, soil-time-climate related studies (also in a palaeo-environment related context) and encourages contributions of soil formation and landscape modelling (over time and space).
Moreover, the session aims at bringing together scientists working on rates of soil-forming processes and initiating new interdisciplinary contacts, crossing disciplinary boundaries.