The relationship between climate, hydrology, erosion, sedimentary transport and deposition is one of the most important issues in earth sciences and it may give important hints on how our planet works. Initially, it results in the formation of a drainage system, and later, in a sedimentary basin that encompasses complex and diverse ecosystems. One of the main scientific challenges nowadays refers to the understanding of dynamic processes involved in large drainage systems, and therefore, the sedimentary source, transport and accumulation in large basins.
The knowledge of the present day large rivers sediment discharges and of their variability is also fundamental since it can be linked to the on-going climatic and erosional processes at the regional scales. Understanding the interrelationships between those processes will be helpful to better infer past sedimentation rates.
This session therefore welcomes contributions aiming at a better characterization of large river basin suspended load, sediments and their geodynamical and climatological significance, following various approaches that may for example include:
• Characterization of the suspended sediments from large rivers based on mineralogy and geochemistry.
• Study of sedimentary sections in river banks and fans using methods that may include micropaleontology, organic geochemistry, stable and radiogenic isotopes...
• Use of remote sensing and other geophysical approaches to assess the present temporal dynamics of sediment discharge within the basin and to analyze the present sedimentation pattern within large rivers delta/fan.
• Development of predictive hydrodynamic models for high rate sedimentation environments
This session will be an opportunity to gather presentations from the FP7 CLIM-AMAZON project aiming at the Amazon River Basin (www.clim-amazon.eu), but contributions for other large rivers or from people outside the project are strongly encouraged for further scientific interactions.