During the past decades numerous sediment records have become available from lakes and paleolakes through shallow and (ICDP) deep drilling. These records have proven to be valuable archives of past climate and environmental change, and tectonic and volcanic activity. We invite contributions emphasizing quantitative and spatial assessments of rates of change, causes and consequences of long- and short-term climate variability, impact, magnitude, and frequency of tectonic and volcanic activity as deduced from sedimentological, geochemical, biological, and chronological tools.

Solicited speaker: Christine Y. Chen (MIT, USA): “Establishing robust lake sediment chronologies: Lessons from U/Th dating the deep drill core from Lake Junín, Peru”

Mineral nucleation and growth processes are well studied for material science and industry applications under controlled laboratory conditions, but our understanding of these complex multistage pathways in natural environments is still rather incomplete. Monitoring precise and quantitative environmental parameters over long time periods is often difficult, imposing great uncertainties on growth processes and physicochemical properties of minerals used to reconstruct Earth’s history, such as microbialites, speleothems, or authigenic cements. Recent findings suggest that nano-clusters, colloidal particles, organic matter or microbes may be fundamental to nucleation and growth processes, especially if kinetics are sluggish at Earth surface temperatures. Thus, it is imperative to investigate mineral formation at the nano- and micro-scale within a broad, interdisciplinary perspective.
In this session we welcome oral and poster presentations from multiple fields including sedimentology, mineralogy, geochemistry, physical chemistry, biology and engineering that contribute to a better understanding of mineral nucleation and growth processes. Contributions may include process-oriented studies in modern systems, the ancient rock record, experiments, computer simulations, and high-resolution microscopy and spectroscopy techniques. We intend to reach a wide community of researchers sharing the common goal of improving our understanding of the fundamental processes underlying mineral formation, which is essential to read our Earth’s geological archive.

This session seeks to explore current research into sediment dispersal systems from a process-based and quantitative source-to-sink perspective.

The study of source-to-sink systems relates long-term variations in sediment flux from source terrains to the morphological and stratigraphic evolution of depositional systems. These variations can reflect allogenic controls and/or autogenic self-organization over a wide range of time scales. Earth’s modern source-to-sink systems are becoming increasingly well characterized due to the proliferation and analysis of big data by academic researchers and industry scientists. Moreover, much progress has also been made transforming these insights into the potential for quantitative and predictive insights into the ancient stratigraphic record, but this remains a major challenge that requires integration of field data, numerical models, and experimental results.

We invite contributions based on observation of field and remotely-sensed data as well as analogue and numerical modelling. We aim to cover a large range of autogenic and allogenic forcing mechanisms that operate on multiple time scales from the significance of individual transport events to the large-scale filling of sedimentary basins.

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"

Particle-laden density flows (e.g. pyroclastic flows, snow avalanches, rivers, turbidity currents) transport huge amounts of sediments across our planet and form some of the largest sediment accumulations on Earth. Interaction of density flows with erodible beds can create a wide range of bedforms and deposits whose morphology relates to the parent flow conditions (e.g. antidunes, chutes-and-pools, cyclic steps which are suggested to result from supercritical flows). However, we know little about the triad of flow dynamics, flow interaction with erodible beds and bedforms, and the resulting sedimentary products. How can we read resting sedimentary deposits and invert the parent dynamic flow conditions from them?
This session aims to bring together field researchers, experimentalists and numerical modellers with an expertise in sedimentology, fluid mechanics and related disciplines to further explore density and supercritical flow dynamics, bedform dynamics and the sedimentary structures they produce. The session welcomes studies across differing spatial and temporal scales, from large-scale organisation patterns down to the grain-scale, as well as the palaeo-dynamic and morphodynamic aspects of control and feedback between flow, sediment transport, bedform evolution and deposits.

Volcanic edifices consist of diverse suites of pyroclastic successions, originated from primary (e.g. tephra fall, lava flow) and reworking processes (e.g. alluvial activity). The volcanoclastic sediments have witnessed the magma fragmentation and subsequent transportation mechanism as flow, turbulent current or tephra fall. Such pyroclastic deposits therefore hold key evidence to understand volcano-stratigraphy, eruption re-occurrence rates, and dominant transportation modes. This session aims to discuss sedimentary and volcanological aspects of volcanoclastic deposits. We invite presentations covering (1) field-based description and interpretation of volcanoclastic sediments, (2) reconstruction of eruptive and sediment transport processes, (3) experimental and numerical simulation of volcano-related sediment transport, and (4) development of new methodologies to understand the formation of volcanoclastic sediments. These topics are critical to understand volcanic phenomena and to improve upon existing volcanic monitoring efforts, and to forecast volcanic hazards in the future.

Marine geological processes cover a range of different disciplinary fields and their understanding usually requires an interdisciplinary approach. The interaction of geological, physical oceanographic, chemical and biological mechanisms in marine geological processes ranging from sediment erosion and deposition, to hydrothermal and fluid flow systems, to early diagenesis and geomicrobiology, is of specific interest. Such processes may take place in shallow or deep, in tropical and glacial environments, and they may be natural or partly human-influenced. Climate-induced perturbations in marine geological processes have occurred in present and past, and potentially will also occur in the future. Several of these processes may also have a profound human impact, such as tsunamis generated by tectonic or mass-slumping events, coastal erosion in response to changed currents or river discharge, and sediment gravity flow in deep waters affecting human infrastructures. /We encourage comprehensive and interdisciplinary abstracts within the broad field of marine geology and with direct relevance to marine processes or deposits concerned with rocks, sediments, and geo-physical and geo-(bio)chemical processes that affect them.

The ocean floor hosts a tremendous variety of forms that reflect the action of a range of tectonic, sedimentary, oceanographic and biological processes at multiple spatio-temporal scales. Many such processes are hazards to coastal populations and offshore installations, and their understanding constitutes a key objective of national and international research programmes and IODP expeditions. High quality bathymetry, especially when combined with sub-seafloor and/or seabed measurements, provides an exciting opportunity to integrate the approaches of geomorphology and geophysics, and to extend quantitative geomorphology offshore. 3D seismic reflection data has also given birth to the discipline of seismic geomorphology, which has provided a 4D perspective to continental margin evolution.

This interdisciplinary session aims to examine the causes and consequences of geomorphic processes shaping underwater landscapes, including submarine erosion and depositional processes, submarine landslides, sediment transfer and deformation, volcanic activity, fluid migration and escape, faulting and folding, and other processes acting at the seafloor. The general goal of the session is to bring together researchers who characterise the shape of past and present seafloor features, seek to understand the sub-surface and surface processes at work and their impacts, or use bathymetry and/or 3D seismic data as a model input. Contributions to this session can include work from any depth or physiographic region, e.g. oceanic plateaus, abyssal hills, mid-ocean ridges, accretionary wedges, and continental margins (from continental shelves to abyss plains). Datasets of any scale, from satellite-predicted depth to ultra high-resolution swath bathymetry, sub-surface imaging and sampling, are anticipated.

This session is organised by the IAG Submarine Geomorphology Working Group.

Tsunamis and storm surges pose significant hazards to coastal communities around the world. Geological investigations, including both field studies and modelling approaches, significantly enhance our understanding of these events. Past extreme wave events may be reconstructed based on sedimentary and geomorphological evidence from low and high energy environments, from low and high latitude regions and from coastal and offshore areas. The development of novel approaches to identifying, characterising and dating evidence for these events supplements a range of established methods. Nevertheless, the differentiation between evidence for tsunamis and storms still remains a significant question for the community. Numerical and experimental modelling studies complement and enhance field observations and are crucial to improving deterministic and probabilistic approaches to hazard assessment. This session welcomes contributions on all aspects of paleo-tsunami and paleo-storm surge research, including studies that use established methods or recent interdisciplinary advances to reconstruct records of past events, or forecast the probability of future events.


This session is a contribution to IGCP Project 639: Sea-Level Change from Minutes to Millennia http://sealevelchange.org/

Examining coastal morphodynamics from the nearshore through to inland dune systems is fundamental in understanding their short- to long-term behaviour. Coastal processes operate across large spatial and temporal scales and therefore comprehending their resulting landforms is complex.

At the coast, dunes provide the physical barrier to flooding during high energy storms, while beaches and nearshore areas help dissipate storm impact through a series of dynamic interactions involving sediment transfers and at times rapid morphological changes. Investigation of complex interactions between these three interconnected systems has become essential for understanding coastal behaviour.

This session, sponsored by the IGU-UGI Commission on Coastal Systems, welcomes contributions from coastal scientists interested in the measurement and modelling of the nearshore 25-0 m zone (waves, currents and sediment transport) and terrestrial coastal processes (on beaches and dunes) and responses within the three sub-units at various scales. The session will highlight the latest research developments in this part of the planet's geomorphic system and facilitate knowledge exchange between the submerged and sub-aerial coastal zones.

Our two Solicited speakers this year are Adam Switzer (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) on 'Investigating records of recent storms on a volcaniclastic barrier system in Bicol, Philippines' and Rob Young (Western Carolina University, USA) on 'Beach Nourishment as Storm Protection: Its Impact on Sediment Budgets and Ecosystems'.

#FlumeFriday is a twitter hashtag established by the HYDRALAB+ project, to share insights and expertise from all types of physical modelling experiments and to build an active online community to support hydraulic experimentalists. #FlumeFriday provides an opportunity to improve the communication of scientific results to the public and to broaden societal involvement in laboratory activities. Since its inception in March 2016, participants and followers of the hashtag have grown extensively with worldwide participation, and many different types of experiment represented in posts.

This online community provides an opportunity to bring together the scientists involved in experimental work who come from many different disciplines including, but not limited to, geologists, geographers, biologists, engineers, geochemists and sedimentologists. These experts bring complementary field, laboratory, numerical and modelling skills to understand the processes controlling environmental flow dynamics using both established and novel instrumentation and techniques.

In this session, we welcome submissions from all our past, present and future #FlumeFriday contributors to share more details about their innovative and novel approaches to experimental modelling, including any interesting and unusual results.

We would also encourage contributions focused on methodologies, instrumentation and techniques, both established and innovative, to share knowledge on how to overcome difficulties and improve results. A particular emphasis is put on recent advances or new challenges associated with the idea of using low-cost and easy-to-find materials as hydro/morphodynamic or bio/geochemical markers or surrogates. The sharing of new strategies and initiatives to support an open science approach in experimental hydraulics is also welcome.

A key goal within geomorphic research is understanding the links between topographic form, erosion rates, and sediment production, transport and deposition. Numerical modelling, by allowing the creation of controlled analogues of natural systems, provides exciting opportunities to explore landscape evolution and generate testable predictions. Furthermore, the advancement of Earth surface monitoring capabilities in recent decades, such as the increasing availability of high-resolution topographic data and new techniques for constraining rates of erosion and deposition, allows the direct testing of numerical models at larger spatial and temporal scales than previously possible. Combining these different techniques provides exciting opportunities for furthering our understanding of Earth surface processes.

In this session, we invite contributions that use numerical modelling to investigate landscape evolution in a broad sense, and over a range of spatial and temporal scales. We welcome studies using models to constrain one or more of: erosion rates and processes, sediment production, transport and deposition, and sediment residence times. We also particularly wish to highlight studies that combine numerical modelling with direct Earth surface process monitoring techniques, such as topographic, field, stratigraphic, or geochronological data. There is no geographical restriction: studies may be focused on mountain environments or sedimentary basins, or they may establish links between the two; studies beyond planet Earth are welcome too.

A wide variety of erosional processes and sediment transport processes act to shape landscapes and generate the sedimentary record. Often, the most sensitive records of sediment production, transport, and deposition are found within detrital archives, which include (but are not limited to) physical sedimentology and textural analyses, detrital thermochronometry, cosmogenic nuclides and other geochemical tools, and stratigraphic analyses.

This session examines how detrital records can be used to study erosion, sedimentation, and sediment provenance. We seek studies that use detrital tools to address open questions in geomorphology and sedimentology, such as: (i) signal propagation through landscapes; (ii) the climatic and tectonic controls on sediment production and transport; (iii) variability in the processes and rates of erosion; (iv) decoding basin deposits for information about past environments; and (v) thresholds governing surface processes. Contributions are welcome from field, experimental, and modelling studies across all temporal and spatial scales.

Aeolian processes operate at a myriad of spatial and temporal scales both on Earth and other planetary bodies. Process and form are linked by feedback mechanisms that drive the evolution of forms and at the larger scale the landscape itself. This session brings together research traversing the spectrum of scale, from long term landscape dating and evolution modelling to small-scale process studies. It will be of interest to researchers that study wind-blown sediment (both sand and dust sized particles) and associated bedforms in a range of environments, from coastal and semi-arid regions, to hyper arid deserts and other planets. Contributions that use novel instrumentation in field or laboratory studies, remote sensing at the landscape scale, innovative numerical modelling or theoretical approaches, are encouraged, particularly those which attempt to elucidate feedback between surface properties and sediment transport.

This session is co-sponsored by the International Society for Aeolian Research (ISAR; http://www.aeolianresearch.com/). The best student presentation (oral or poster) in this session will receive two-year ISAR membership and a book prize.

This session is the result of a merger of two sessions:
Session CL4.28/AS3.6/GM10.2/SSP3.25
"Aeolian dust: initiator, player, and recorder of environmental change", and
Session AS3.7
"Atmospheric Desert Dust characterisation through Remote Sensing observations".

Together, these two sessions cover a huge range of scientific disciplines that study mineral-dust generation, transport, and deposition, as well as the many roles that mineral dust plays in environmental change.

The merger has resulted in a very nice set of interesting dusty abstracts covering huge ranges of spatial and temporal scales and with contributions from many scientific disciplines including atmospheric science, remote sensing, (palaeo)climate science, geomorphology and sedimentology but also human health and environmental science. We look forward to an inspiring and challenging PICO session and we invite you to participate!

Public information:
We have three PICO blocks and two invited speakers (in between the 2-minute madness and PICOs):
1) Vassilis Amiridis (10.45 - 11.00) - Dust remote sensing advances in the framework of ACTRIS
2) Carlos Pérez García-Pando (14.00 - 14.15) - FRontiers in dust minerAloGical coMposition and its Effects upoN climaTe (FRAGMENT)

The integrated study of field (young, and ancient analogues preserved in orogenic systems), seismic reflection/refraction, gravity/magnetics, well data (exploration and IODP), analogue and thermo-mechanical modelling approaches have greatly improved our understanding of the processes that influence and modify the architecture (crustal, magmatic, sedimentary, structural and thermal) of the distal domain of rifted margins. As more data becomes available our appreciation of the 3D and ultimately 4D geodynamic processes that influence the formation and present day structure of distal margins is evolving. Although all rifted margins are somewhat unique, similar genetic processes are often proposed despite the underlying interpretational uncertainties. These uncertainties can impact the resulting interpretations relating to the tectono-magmatic and crustal models. Therefore, despite many models the process often remains controversial and/or far for being well constrained.

This session would like to explore and discuss the observations and interpretations derived from geological and geophysical datasets across rifted margins and distal margins. Importantly, uncertainties should be addressed with respect to our current understanding of the genetic rift-domain evolution. Observations should focus on the evidences for processes that impact the final architecture, rock content and thermal imprint of conjugate margins. This relates to the observed style of extension and thinning (high vs low angle faulting and static vs dynamic interpretations and their evidence), vertical motions (e.g. uplift and subsidence), the isostatic impacts of the tectonic, magmatic and stratigraphic history relating to the genetic-rift domains.

The interlinked influences of tectonics, erosion and climate govern the topographic and debatably also structural evolution of mountain belts. In turn, the evolution of any given mountain belt can influence the development of the regions’ climate, erosion and sedimentation patterns. Sedimentary records can preserve a rich archive of a region’s tectonics, erosion and/or climate history that can be interrogated through application of a number of approaches utilising, for example, sediment provenance, detrital thermochronology, determination of sedimentation rates and facies, and stable isotope studies. Suitable continental records may exist in foreland basins and retro-arc settings located proximal to the mountain sources, and scientific drilling has been important in recovering records from the modern oceans. Located potentially far from the mountains, many submarine fans may preserve more complete and readily dated sedimentary sections. Analysis and comparison of strata across different parts of a mountain belt can potentially allow a more detailed spatial and temporal understanding of climatic and tectonic evolution of a region as an orogen uplifts and subsequently collapses. Although the Asian Monsoon-Himalayan system is the classic example of tectonic-erosion-climate interactions, similar relationships have been invoked in South America, Papua New Guinea, Taiwan and the Pyrenees during the Cenozoic alone. We invite contributions that utilise sediment records to unravel the links and relationships between tectonics, erosion or climate change, in recent or ancient orogenic settings, using traditional and novel application of field, laboratory and/or modelling techniques.

Orogenic systems, including their external fold-and-thrust belts and foreland basin systems are influenced by pre-existing structures due to inherited extension, variations in thermal regime, presence or absence of evaporitic sequences, syn-tectonic sedimentation, imbrication of sub-thrust units, or climatic changes. These factors have a fundamental impact on structural styles as well as the distribution of deformation in space and time. Defining the correct structural style of fold-and-thrust belts including its uncertainty, and understanding the controlling factors are necessary steps towards predicting their long- and short-term evolution, with implications for crustal/lithospheric rheology, mountain building processes and seismic hazard, and for the correct assessment of their potential for hydrocarbon exploration. For these reasons, fold-and-thrust belts and adjacent foreland basin systems represent outstanding places to investigate (active) deformation and surface processes and the way these processes interact to shape mountain belts. On a short-time scale, the pattern of deformation of fold-and-thrust belts provides information on crustal mechanics, the sequence of active faulting and its relation to earthquakes; on a long-time scale, the structure and dynamics of the fold-and-thrust belt - foreland basin systems offers unique insights into the influence of structural, thermal and rheological inheritance, together with coupling between surface and deep processes. Thermochronology has brought new constraints on paleo-burial, exhumation and vertical movements, as well as sediment routing in fold-and-thrust belt-foreland basin systems. In addition, 2D-3D dynamic modeling by means of analog experiments and numerical simulation has been increasingly used as a tool to validate kinematic restorations and to test the influence of varying boundary conditions and material rheology on mountain building at the lithospheric scale.

This session brings together geoscientists to present and discuss multidisciplinary approaches in which a wide range of tools are integrated. We welcome contributions reporting regional case studies and their links to hinterland portions of mountain belts, as well as more topical works on structural uncertainty analysis, seismology, mechanics, temperature evolution, structural geology, geomorphology, exhumation and paleo-elevation, sediment transport and mass balance, surface processes and basin dynamics during pre- and syn-collision stages, together with analogue or numerical modeling approaches. We aim at providing a forum for all disciplines concerned with building and shaping of orogenic wedges by tectonics and climate to meet and discuss their views.

What controls lithosphere evolution during extension? The aim of this session is to investigate diverging systems over a wide range of spatial and temporal scales, and at all stages in the life cycle of divergent plate boundaries including continental rifting, mantle exhumation and seafloor spreading.
A special emphasis will be given to
(1) studies that couple lithospheric deformation models to plate kinematics, and that integrate possibly the role of serpentinisation and/or magmatism in the models.
(2) works that analyse subsidence and thermal effect of rifting and break-up.
(3) paleogeographic reconstructions revealing the influence of sedimentation and lithosphere structure evolution on biogeochemical cycles and oceanographic circulation.
(4) contributions that elucidate extensional modes through the interplay between tectonic structures, magmatism and the stratigraphic record using field, petrological and seismic data.