Fluvial systems cover much of the Earth’s surface; they convey water, sediments, and essential nutrients from the uplands to the sea, intermittently transferring these materials from the river channel to the adjacent floodplain. The routing of sediment and water through the channel network initiates complex process-form interactions as the river bed and banks adjust to changes in flow conditions. Despite their ubiquity, little is known about the landform-driven morphodynamic interactions taking place within the channel that ultimately determine patterns of sedimentation and changes of channel form. Furthermore, an understanding of how these process-form interactions scale with the size of the fluvial system is also currently lacking. Recent technological advances now afford us the opportunity to study and to quantify these process-form interactions in detail across a range of spatial and temporal scales. This session aims to bring together interdisciplinary researchers working across field, experimental, and numerical modelling approaches who are advancing methods and providing new insights into: (i) sediment transport and morphodynamic functioning of fluvial systems, (ii) evaluating morphological change at variable spatial and temporal scales, such as at event vs. seasonal scales, and (iii) investigating the sedimentology of these river systems. We particularly welcome applications which investigate the morphodynamic response of fluvial systems in all types and sizes and we specifically would like to encourage submissions from early career researchers and students.

Invited speakers:
- Lina Polvi Sjöberg (Umeå University): "Streams frozen in time? Particle- to catchment- scale dynamics of high-latitude post-glacial streams."
- Anette Eltner (TU Dresden): "Unmanned aerial and water vehicle data for hydro-morphological river
monitoring"

Fluvial morphodynamics are characterized by the coupling between sediment supply, storage, and transport, as well as between flow resistance and bed morphology. However, the relationships between these characteristics vary across fluvial landscapes. Specifically in steep channels, the threshold for motion has been shown to change significantly in space and time, and possibly with slope, and observed sediment transport rates are lower than predicted based on classic equations developed for lowland channels. Macro-roughness elements including large-wood structures complicate estimates of flow resistance and boundary shear stress, and hillslope-channel coupling adds to system disorder. The poor performance of traditional sediment transport approaches consequently limits the utility of channel evolution models to predict the morphology of steep mountain rivers – the lower boundary control of mountainous terrain evolution.
This session welcomes field, experimental, theoretical, and modelling efforts aimed at improving (1) our understanding of the morphodynamics of mountain river channels, as well as (2) predictive models for sediment transport in mountainous channels. In addition, we welcome studies spanning a range of spatial scales, from the grain to landscape scale.

In recent decades, quantitative methods have become increasingly important in the field of palaeoenvironmental, palaeoclimatic and palaeohydrological reconstruction, due to the need for comparison between different records and to provide boundary conditions for computational modelling. Continental environmental archives (e.g. speleothems, lakes, land snails, rivers, or peatlands) are often highly temporally resolved (subdecadal to seasonal) and may provide more direct information about atmospheric and hydrological processes than marine archives. The wide variety of archive types available on land also allows for intercomparison and ground-truthing of results from different techniques and different proxies, and multi-proxy reconstructions from the same archive can disentangle local and supra-regional environmental conditions. This approach is particularly useful for the reconstruction of hydrological dynamics, which are challenging to reconstruct due to their high spatial variability, signal buffering, nonlinearities and uncertainties in the response of available paleoclimate archives and proxies. For example, climate-independent factors such as land cover change can affect the local to regional water availability recorded in proxies.

This session aims to highlight recent advances in the use of innovative and quantitative proxies to reconstruct past environmental change on land. We present studies of various continental archives, including but not limited to carbonates (caves, paleosols, snails), sediments (lakes, rivers, alluvial fans), and biological proxies (tree rings, fossil assemblages, plant biomarkers). We particularly include studies involving the calibration of physical and chemical proxies that incorporate modern transfer functions, forward modeling and/or geochemical modeling to predict proxy signals, and quantitative estimates of past temperature and palaeohydrological dynamics. We also include reconstructions of temperature and hydrologic variability over large spatial scales and paleoclimate data assimilation. This session will provide a forum for discussing recent innovations and future directions in the development of terrestrial palaeoenvironmental proxies on seasonal to multi-millennial timescales.

This session aims to highlight recent advances in the use of innovative and quantitative proxies to reconstruct past environmental change on land. We welcome studies of any continental archive, including but not limited to carbonates (caves, paleosols, snails), sediments (lakes, rivers, alluvial fans), ice, and biological proxies (tree rings, fossil assemblages, plant biomarkers). We particularly encourage studies involving the calibration of physical and chemical proxies that incorporate modern transfer functions, forward modeling and/or geochemical modeling to predict proxy signals, and quantitative estimates of past temperature and precipitation amounts. We also welcome reconstructions of temperature and hydrologic variability over large spatial scales, including paleoclimate data assimilation studies. This session will provide a forum for discussing recent innovations and future directions in the development of terrestrial palaeoenvironmental proxies on seasonal to multi-millennial timescales.

Synergistic approaches to respond to water, food and energy increasing needs, incorporating the need to hinder impacts on the environmental (land) and socio-economic realities, are essential to attain the UN Sustainable Development Goals 2, 6, 7 and 15. Such nexus approach is highly challenging given the substantial and highly contextual interdependencies between sectors. It becomes more daunting if we consider the need to adapt to climate change.

In response to this global development challenge, this session brings together the community of engineers, scholars, scientists and decision makers, with a common interest on novel frameworks and methodologies for an integrated water resources management taking into account its connections to energy production, land use and impacts and societal implications in a context of climate change adaptation. We discuss improved approaches for water related nexus, which not only considers the effects in the geophysical system (water, sediment, landscape) but also further implications related to socio-economic and ecological spheres. The works presented contain conceptual and applied models with references to energy production, engineering response, management, nature protection, agriculture and society. New approaches to analyse and manage superficial water storage, essential to sustain and stabilize water supply, food and energy production, reduce hydro-climatological hazards, and adapt to climate change, are discussed as well.

More generally, the session presents integrated models for assessment and optimization which identify co-benefits and trade-offs between different Sustainable Development Goals at several spatial and temporal scales: global, regional and basin; and short, middle and long- term perspectives, respectively. Contributions integrate the impacts of climate change into long-term planning, dynamic adaptation or simulation models.

Hydromorphological processes in aquatic environments such as rivers, estuaries as well as lakes and reservoirs, include entrainment, transport, deposition and sorting processes which are key features for various research disciplines, e.g. geomorphology and paleoclimatology or hydraulics and river engineering. An accurate evaluation of entrainment, transport and deposition transport rates as well as limited supply processes like e.g. scouring or grain sorting, effecting channel morphology and bed composition, is fundamental for an adequate development of conceptual sediment budget models and for the calibration and validation of numerical tools. With improved algorithms as well as an increasing computational power, it became feasible to simulate the interaction of water, sediments and air (multiphase flows) with high resolution in space and time. In addition, with an increasing quantity and quality of validation and verification data, both from laboratory experiments and field studies, numerical models become more accurate and it is possible to gain new insight in complex physical processes, e.g. dune development, river bed armoring or density driven transport.

The main goal of this session is to bring together the community of scientists, scholars and engineers, investigating, teaching and applying novel measurement techniques, monitoring concepts and numerical models, which are crucial to determine sedimentary and hydro-morphological processes in rivers, lakes and reservoirs, estuaries as well as in coastal and maritime environments. Within the focus of this session are the evaluation, quantification and modelling of bed load and suspended load, flocculation, settling, and re-suspension/erosion of such processes relevant to morphological channel changes as bed form development, horizontal channel migration, bed armouring and colmation.

Public information:
Dear colleague,
on behalf of the organizers of the session HS9.1.1/GM8.7
“Measurements, monitoring and modelling of hydro-morphological processes in open-water environments" I would like to invite you to our post-session social gathering. I reserved a table at the "Sieben Sterne Bräu" in Siebensterngasse 19 (https://goo.gl/maps/vgUZmsXZKSE2). You are more than welcome to join in order to continue scientific and non scientific discussions. The table is reserved from 19.00 on the 10.4.2019.