Landforms and landscape can be a resource for communities and/or communities are challenged by the effects of geomorphological processes and changes. However, we now live in a world in which the relationship between environment and society has fundamentally changed due to the nature and scale of the human footprint on the planet. Furthermore, we experience a new dimension of environmental changes and socio-economic developments.
This session is targeted at developing an international network of scientists with common interests in geomorphology and, in particular, the complex and integrated nature of the relationship between landforms, geomorphological processes and people. As such, we are inviting contributions that focus on the two-way interactions between geomorphological processes/landforms and human activity. These should show how the various factors of the physical environment interact with the anthroposphere, and, in turn, how population and individuals may affect (and change) these factors. As a corollary, contributions may center on interrelationships between man and the landscape, or human-landscape relations, with mutual interaction.
In this context, topics of different fields may be addressed in the session such as landform evolution, landscape sensitivity and resilience, geohazards, geoheritage, geomorphological responses to (and evidence for) environmental change, and applied geomorphology.
Possible key concepts may include the concept of space and the concept of time, which involves the paradigms of dynamical systems, nonlinearities, chaotic behaviour and even panarchy in geomorphological and social systems. Moreover, issues of scale and hierarchies may be addressed, and methods and applications of dynamic rather than equilibrium ideas and metaphors.
Contributions should provide new insights how to conceptualize, analyse, model and/or interpret such two-way interactions between geomorphological processes/landforms and human activity in the past, present or future.