On the linkage between humans, precipitation patterns, and floods

The growing frequency of extreme hydrologic events over multi-decadal timescales is becoming increasingly apparent at the global scale. In addition, the synchronous increase of population in flood prone areas intensifies further the impacts associated with these extreme flood events with significant societal, environmental and ecological consequences. A correct management of the impacts of extreme flood and storm events requires a greater understanding of the processes that drive them. A great challenge in such understanding is to discern whether shifts in processes, such as shifts in streamflows, also bears the signature of human activity, and if such signature is coincident (or not) with major shifts in rainfall patterns. This talk will provide an overview about this complex set of interactions, and will showcase some study cases where human drivers, rainfall patterns and floods have been analysed.

Geomorphological mapping is one of the most important tools that helps to understand landscape character and evolution. In the digital era, cartographic products have become increasingly accessible to scientists and the wider society due to the development of GIS technology, increases in data and software availability (i.e. open source), and the expansion of user-friendly and easy-to-access interfaces. Geomorphological maps are crucial in a range of pure scientific and applied disciplines. Applications include reconstructing past depositional environments, landscape evolution modelling, establishing chronologies, geohazard assessment, planning of engineering activities and land use. Recent technological advances in data collection have enhanced mapping quality to new levels of detail and accuracy. Significant developments include the accessibility of high resolution datasets and new data collection methods (e.g. LiDAR data, high-resolution satellite imagery, drones/unmanned aerial vehicles, geophysical imaging), and innovative processing methods (e.g. Structure-from-Motion photogrammetry). These are often combined with more traditional field-based mapping approaches. As a result of recent advances, we are now able to identify landforms that were not previously detectable and to interpret processes which were previously unknown or unrecognised. Moreover, new semi-automatic and automatic mapping approaches can support rapid delimitation and extraction of selected landforms or even whole landform assemblages.

This session aims to showcase recent advances in landform mapping, and we invite contributions related to mapping of specific landforms as well as whole landsystems in different environments. We particularly welcome studies that (a) demonstrate the potential of multi-method and innovative mapping approaches, (b) showcase novel methods of data collection to solve previously overlooked problems, or (c) present mapping of previously unmapped or newly-emerging landscapes.

Keynote lecture:
Jeremy Ely (Sheffield, UK): Global glacial geomorphology

In the last 20 years, a major breakthrough in palaeo-environmental research has been the utilisation of 2D and 3D seismic reflection data and its integration with borehole petrophysics and core lithologies: the so-called “geological Hubble”. This step-change in seismic data quality and interpretive techniques has allowed imaging and analysis of the subsurface from the seafloor down to the Moho, and for palaeo-geographies and contemporary processes to be reconstructed across 1D (borehole) to 4D (repeat seismic) scales.

Though many Earth scientists know the basic principles of these subsurface datasets, they are often unaware of the full capability of seismic data paired with borehole data. We hope that this session will provide a window into the exciting and cross-disciplinary research currently being performed using geomorphological approaches, state-of-the-art seismic interpretation, and integrative methodologies.

Submissions are welcome from a range of geological settings, thus, exposing seismic interpreters and non-specialists to differing geological perspectives, the latest seismic workflows, and examples of effective seismic and borehole integration. Examples could include (but are not restricted to), glacigenic tunnel valley complexes, igneous intrusions, submarine landslides, channel and canyon systems, salt tectonics overburden expression, methane hydrates, and subsurface fluid flow, all under the theme of how seismic data are interpreted and how the results are applied (e.g. palaeo-environmental reconstruction, seafloor engineering, or carbon sequestration).

The submissions will highlight the rationale behind the interpretation of seismic geometries and will generate discussions around potential issues of equifinality (i.e. similar seismic geometries arising from different Earth processes). We thus invite submissions that aim to present new insights in seismic geomorphology and particularly welcome studies integrating borehole and geotechnical drilling information with shallow high-resolution seismic data and deeper traditional legacy oil industry data. Such studies are a crucial component in seismic inversion and refining or elucidating the accuracy of palaeo-geographies that are interpreted from just seismic data.

The session will be an excellent opportunity for subsurface geoscientists to showcase and discuss with contemporary geomorphologists and environmental scientists what can be achieved by utilising seismic and borehole data to unravel the Earth’s past.

Seismic techniques are becoming widely used to detect and quantitatively characterise a wide variety of natural processes occurring at the Earth’s surface. These processes include mass movements such as landslides, rock falls, debris flows and lahars; glacial phenomena such as icequakes, glacier calving/serac falls, glacier melt and supra- to sub-glacial hydrology; snow avalanches; water storage and water dynamics phenomena such as water table changes, river flow turbulence and fluvial sediment transport. Where other methods often provide limited spatial and temporal coverage, seismic observations allow recovering sequences of events with high temporal resolution and over large areas. These observational capabilities allow establishing connections with meteorological drivers, and give unprecedented insights on the underlying physics of the various Earth’s surface processes as well as on their interactions (chains of events). These capabilities are also of first interest for real time hazards monitoring and early warning purposes. In particular, seismic monitoring techniques can provide relevant information on the dynamics of flows and unstable slopes, and thus allow for the identification of precursory patterns of hazardous events and timely warning.

This session aims at bringing together scientists who use seismic methods to study Earth surface dynamics. We invite contributions from the field of geomorphology, cryospheric sciences, seismology, natural hazards, volcanology, soil system sciences and hydrology. Theoretical, field based and experimental approaches are highly welcome.

Planetary Geomorphology aims to bring together geomorphologists from terrestrial sciences with those who work on other bodies such as Mars, Venus, Mercury, the Moon, icy satellites of the outer solar system, comets, and asteroids. Studies of landscapes on any scale on any solid body are welcome. We particularly encourage those who use Earth analogues (either in the field or laboratory) to present their work. Submissions can include studies on glacial, periglacial, aeolian, volcanic, fluvial, or "undetermined" landforms. We welcome contributions from early-career scientists and geomorphologists who are new to planetary science.

#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.

Geoscience witnessed a flurry of major breakthroughs in the 19th and 20th century, leading to major shifts in our understanding of the Earth system. Such breakthroughs included new concepts, such as plate tectonics and sequence stratigraphy, and new techniques, like radiometric dating and remote sensing. However, the pace of these discoveries has declined, raising the question of whether we have now made all of the key geoscience breakthroughs. Put another way, have we reached “Peak Geoscience” and are we now in a time of synthesis, incremental development and consolidation? Or are there new breakthroughs on the horizon? If so what will these developments be?

One key remaining challenge is the management of the inherent uncertainties in geoscience. Despite the importance of understanding uncertainty, it is often neglected by interpreters, geomodellers and experimentalists. With ever-more powerful computers and the advent of big data analytics and machine learning, our ability to quantify uncertainty in geological interpretation, models and experiments will be crucial.

This session aims to bring together those with an interest in the future of geoscience. We welcome contributions from any field of geoscience which either demonstrate a new, disruptive geoscience breakthrough or provide insights into where the next breakthrough will come. We encourage contributions associated with uncertainty in geoscience models and data, machine learning or big data analytics.

A well-designed experiment is a crucial methodology in Soil Science, Geomorphology and Hydrology.
Depending on the specific research topic, a great variety of tempo-spatial scales is addressed.
From raindrop impact and single particle detachment to the shaping of landscapes: experiments are designed and conducted to illustrate problems, clarify research questions, develop and test hypotheses, generate data and deepen process understanding.
Every step involved in design, construction, conduction, processing and interpretation of experiments and experimental data might be a challenge on itself, and discussions within the community can be a substantial and fruitful component for both, researchers and teachers.
This PICO session offers a forum for experimentalists, teachers, students and enthusiasts.
We invite you to present your work, your questions, your results and your method, to meet, to discuss, to exchange ideas and to consider old and new approaches.
Join the experimentalists!

This session aims to bridge the existing gap between the process-focused fields (hydrology, geomorphology, soil sciences, natural hazards, planetary science, geo-biology, archaeology) and the technical domain (engineering, computer vision, machine learning, and statistics) where terrain analysis approaches are developed.
The rapid growth of survey technologies and computing advances and the increase of data acquisition from various sources (platforms and sensors) has led to a vast data swamp with unprecedented spatio-temporal range, density, and resolution (from submeter to global scale data), which requires efficient data processing to extract suitable information. The challenge is now the interpretation of surface morphology for a better understanding of processes at a variety of scales, from micro, to local, to global.

We aim to foster inter-disciplinarity with a focus on new techniques in digital terrain analysis and production from any discipline which touches on geomorphometry, including but not exclusive to geomorphology (e.g., tectonic/volcanic/climatic/glacial), planetary science, archaeology, geo-biology, natural hazards, computer vision, remote sensing, image processing.
We invite submissions related to the successful application of geomorphometric methods, innovative geomorphometric variables as well as their physical, mathematical and geographical meanings. Submissions related to new techniques in high-resolution terrain or global scale data production and analysis, independent of the subject, as well as studies focused on the associated error and uncertainty analyses, are also welcome. We actively encourage contributors to present work “in development”, as well as established techniques being used in a novel way. We strongly encourage young scientists to contribute and help drive innovation in our community, presenting their work to this session.

We want to foster collaboration and the sharing of ideas across subject-boundaries, between technique developers and users, enabling us as a community to fully exploit the wealth of knowledge inherent in our digital landscape. Just remember, the driver for new ideas and applications often comes from another speciality, discipline or subject: Your solution may already be out there waiting for you!

Topographic data are fundamental to landscape characterization across the geosciences, for monitoring change and supporting process modelling. Over the last decade, the dominance of laser-based instruments for high resolution data collection has been challenged by advances in digital photogrammetry and computer vision, particularly in ‘structure from motion’ (SfM) algorithms, which offer a new paradigm to geoscientists.

High resolution topographic (HiRT) data are now obtained over spatial scales from millimetres to kilometres, and over durations of single events to lasting time series (e.g. from sub-second to decadal-duration time-lapse), allowing evaluation of dependencies between event magnitudes and frequencies. Such 4D-reconstruction capabilities enable new insight in diverse fields such as soil erosion, micro-topography reconstruction, volcanology, glaciology, landslide monitoring, and coastal and fluvial geomorphology. Furthermore, broad data integration from multiple sensors offers increasingly exciting opportunities.

This session will evaluate the advances in techniques to model topography and to study patterns of topographic change at multiple temporal and spatial scales. We invite contributions covering all aspects of HiRT reconstruction in the geosciences, and particularly those which transfer traditional expertise or demonstrate a significant advance enabled by novel datasets. We encourage contributions describing workflows that optimize data acquisition and post-processing to guarantee acceptable accuracies and to automate data application (e.g. geomorphic feature detection and tracking), and field-based experimental studies using novel multi-instrument and multi-scale methodologies. A major goal is to provide a cross-disciplinary exchange of experiences with modern technologies and data processing tools, to highlight their potentials, limitations and challenges in different environments.

Solicited speaker: Kuo-Jen Chang (National Taipei University of Technology) - UAS LiDAR data processing, quality assessment and geosciences prospects

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.

Geochronological frameworks are essential for the study of landscape evolution. Over the last decades, geochronological techniques such as cosmogenic nuclides, thermochronology, radiocarbon and luminescence dating have improved in accuracy, precision, and temporal range. Recently, the development of new approaches, new isotopic/mineral systems, and the increasing combination of these techniques are expanding their range of applications. This session explores these advances and novel applications, which include the study of erosional rates and processes, sediment provenance, burial and transport times, bedrock exposure or cooling histories, landscape dynamics, and the examination of potential biases and discordances in geochronological data. We welcome contributions that use dating tools which are established or in development, particularly those that quantify geomorphological processes with novel approaches and/or generic implications. We encourage studies that combine different techniques (e.g. CRN, luminescence, thermochronology, etc.) or data sets (e.g. field, remote sensing, numerical modelling), and/or highlight the latest developments and open questions in the application of geochronometers to landscape evolution questions.

Invited speakers: Prof. Kristina Hippe and Prof. Todd Ehlers.

During the Quaternary Period, the last 2.6 million years of Earth's history, changes in environments and climate shaped human evolution. In particular, large-scale features of atmospheric circulation patterns varied significantly due to the dramatic changes in global boundary conditions which accompanied abrupt changes in climate. Reconstructing these environmental changes relies heavily on precise and accurate chronologies. Radiocarbon dating continues to play a vital role in providing chronological control over the last 50,000 years, but advances in recent years on a range of other geochronological techniques that are applicable to the Quaternary have made available a much wider diversity of methods. In this session, contributions are particularly welcome that aim to (1) reduce, quantify and express dating uncertainties in any dating method, including high-resolution radiocarbon approaches, (2) use established geochronological methods to answer new questions, (3) use new methods to address longstanding issues, or (4) combine different chronometric techniques for improved results, including the analysis of chronological datasets with novel methods, such as Bayesian age-depth modelling. Applications may aim to understand long-term landscape evolution, quantify rates of geomorphological processes, or provide chronologies for records of climate change.

To fully diagnose the mechanisms behind the complex teleconnections of past abrupt climate transitions accurate dating and correlation is imperative. This is one of the main goals of the INTIMATE initiative. Furthermore, we aim towards a global approach to integrating climate data, by considering archives from the tropics to the poles and develop our understanding of proxy-sensitivities to different aspects of climate and environmental change (e.g. temperature, precipitation, nutrient availability, sunlight). Finally, we should test our hypotheses and challenge our ideas using models of atmosphere-ocean-biosphere processes. INTIMATE aims to provide a better understanding of the mechanisms of abrupt climate change, with a particular emphasis on the integration and interpretation of global records of abrupt climate changes during the last glacial to interglacial cycle.

Our invited speaker is Prof. Tim Jull, the Editor of the Radiocarbon Journal who will speak about
"Annual carbon-14 variability in tree-rings: Causes and Implications for the calibration curve."

The interactions between geo-environmental and anthropic processes are increasing due to the ever-growing population and its related side effects (e.g., urban sprawl, land degradation, natural resource and energy consumption, etc.). Natural hazards, land degradation and environmental pollution are three of the possible “interactions” between geosphere and anthroposphere. In this context, spatial and spatiotemporal data are of crucial importance for the identification, analysis and modelling of the processes of interest in Earth and Soil Sciences. The information content of such geo-environmental data requires advanced mathematical, statistical and geomorphometric methodologies in order to be fully exploited.

The session aims to explore the challenges and potentialities of quantitative spatial data analysis and modelling in the context of Earth and Soil Sciences, with a special focus on geo-environmental challenges. Studies implementing intuitive and applied mathematical/numerical approaches and highlighting their key potentialities and limitations are particularly sought after. A special attention is paid to spatial uncertainty evaluation and its possible reduction, and to alternative techniques of representation of spatial data (e.g., visualization, sonification, haptic devices, etc.).

In the session, two main topics will be covered (although the session is not limited to them!):
1) Analysis of sparse (fragmentary) spatial data for mapping purposes with evaluation of spatial uncertainty: geostatistics, machine learning, statistical learning, etc.
2) Analysis and representation of exhaustive spatial data at different scales and resolutions: geomorphometry, image analysis, machine learning, pattern recognition, etc.

Drones (also Unmanned Aerial Vehicles/Systems (UAV/UAS), Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems) have revolutionised the ability to collect ultra-high spatial resolution spatial data at the scale of millimetres to centimetres. This has allowed a new scale of mapping and process research in the geosciences. Drones and associated sensors can be cost-effective compared with high spatial resolution airborne and satellite data, providing flexibility in deployment. The development curve of miniaturized drone sensors and data processing software / hardware solution has been transformative, but has not perhaps satisfied scientists’ expectations. Many geoscientists are grappling with quality, stability and reliability in the collection and calibration of data from sensors that have over-promised but under-delivered in practice, or are simply not suited to particular applications. Drone hardware and software has provided tools to process the data, but many tools are black-box, and the resulting observations have quality issues that can impact the questions that are being answered by geoscientists in mapping and process studies. This PICO session will share peoples’ knowledge of the issues and limits of sensors and processing workflows, focusing on communicating and sharing solutions for addressing and advancing our understanding of how ultra-high spatial resolution drone data can (and cannot) be collected, calibrated, processed and then used to answer research questions in the geosciences. Specific themes we wish to promote include:
- Work quantifying sensor quality, stability and reliability in the collection of data, with a focus on sharing information around quantifying limits, providing solutions and communicating best (or limits on) use of data,
- Best practice in the calibration of data (particularly spectral and thermal sensors), and relating this to levels of processing/calibration/validation required to answer geoscience questions,
- Collection and processing of LiDAR and photogrammetry Structure from Motion (SfM) data and the use of fine-resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) in the geosciences,
- Limitations and opportunities in using drones for mapping studies in the geosciences,
- Limitations and opportunities in using drones for process studies in the geosciences,
- Related work that focuses on solutions to issues experienced in using drone data in the geosciences.
- Examples of applications that are affected or overcome issues related to sensor quality, calibration and data pre-processing (orthomosaicing, radiometric correction, vignette correction, BRDF correction, conversion of digital numbers to at-surface reflectance).


We are pleased to announce a keynote presentation from Dr Patrice Carbonneau (University of Durham).

The use of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) for geosciences applications has strongly increased in last years. Nowadays the massive diffusion of mini- and micro-RPAS is becoming a valuable alternative to the traditional monitoring and surveying applications, opening new interesting viewpoints. The advantages of the use of RPAS are particularly important in areas characterized by hazardous natural processes, where the acquisition of high resolution remotely sensed data could be a powerful instrument to quickly assess the damages and plan effective rescues without any risk for operators.
In general, the primary goal of these systems is the collection of different data (e.g., images, LiDAR point clouds, gas or radioactivity concentrations, etc.) and the delivery of various products (e.g., 3D models, hazard maps, high-resolution orthoimages, etc.).
The possible use of RPAS has promising perspectives not only for natural hazards, but also in the different field of geosciences, to support a high-resolution geological or geomorphological mapping, or to study the evolution of active processes. The high repeatability of RPAS flight and their limited costs allows the multi-temporal analysis of a studied area. However, methodologies, best practices, advantages and limitations of this kind of applications are yet unclear and/or poorly shared by the scientific community.
This session aims at exploring the open research issues and possible applications of RPAS in geosciences, collecting experiences, case studies, and results, as well as define methodologies and best practices for their practical use. The session will concern the contributions aiming at: i) describing the development of new methods for the acquisition and processing of RPAS dataset, ii) introducing the use of new sensors developed or adapted to RPAS, iii) reporting new data processing methods related to image or point cloud segmentation and classification and iv) presenting original case studies that can be considered an excellent example for the scientific community.

Analogue experiments and numerical simulation have become an integral part of the Earth explorer's toolbox to select, formulate, and test hypotheses on the origin and evolution of geological phenomena. In addition, a growing body of structural ground truth and geophysical observations as well as profound advances in remote sensing techniques offers to compare the modeled predictions with nature

To foster synergy between modelers and geologists focusing on field and geophysical or remote sensing data, we provide a multi-disciplinary platform to discuss research on tectonics, structural geology, rock mechanics, geodynamics, volcanology, geomorphology, and sedimentology.

We therefore invite contributions demonstrating the state-of-the-art in analogue and numerical / analytical modelling on a variety of spatial and temporal scales, varying from earthquakes and volcanic eruptions to plate tectonics and landscape evolution, as well as contributions focusing on remote sensing, geophysical and geodetic studies, with a specific focus on transpression. Local to crustal scale transpression is the most common deformation regime recognized at active and ancient plate boundaries formed by oblique plate convergence, and although the concept of strain partitioning is well established, the heterogeneity of transpressive deformation continues to be an important topic.

We especially welcome those presentations that discuss model strengths and weaknesses, challenge the existing limits, or compare/combine the different modelling techniques with observations from the natural world to realistically simulate and better understand the Earth's behavior.

Hydrology relies strongly on heterogeneous data sets and a multitude of computational models. However, several challenges remain in order to obtain all information from the data and model results and, at the same time, carry out scientific work that is reproducible and repeatable.

Data collection is generally the first step in the scientific process, but collecting spatially and temporally dense data sets can be challenging, especially in extreme environments, such as dry, humid or cold areas. Therefore, environmental data sets are often sparse and do not allow us to fully understand the hydrological and associated environmental processes dominant in these areas. Therefore, innovative ideas are needed to build methods able to extract information from the available data and make use of the many signatures in the observations that are still to be explored.

On the other hand, an increasing amount of heterogenous data becomes available from diverse sources such as remote sensing, social media or citizen science. Platforms and tools are needed to interpret such data, identify and understand patterns, trends, and uncertainty and to draw conclusions and implications from data-driven research. New methods for data visualization can be a pivotal for our ability to make new sense of heterogeneous data and to communicate complex datasets and findings in an appropriate way to other researchers and the public.

Eventually, the full scientific process should be open, reproducible and repeatable. Many data sets contain a wide range of derived variables that cannot be easily re-computed from the raw data, either because the raw data is not available or because the computational steps are not adequately described. As a result, very few published results in hydrology are reproducible for the general reader. However, more and more software tools and platforms are becoming available to support open science, partly as a result of collaborations between software experts and hydrologists.

This session invites contributions on topics ranging from data collection and visualization to sharing model code and reproducible workflows, e.g.:

- Platforms and tools for improved data visualization, open science, scientific collaboration and/or communication with a larger audience
- Use of innovative data and data collection techniques, with a focus on data sparse environments
- Case studies illustrating challenges and solutions related to open science
- Innovative types of data and their visualizations

This session is organized in cooperation with the Young Hydrologic Society (youngHS.com).

Mountain environments host highly dynamical and widespread erosion, sedimentation, and weathering processes. These processes cover a wide range of temporal and spatial scales, from glacial & periglacial erosion, mechanical & chemical weathering, rock fall, debris flows, landslides, to river aggradation & incision. These processes react to a wide spectrum of external and internal forcings, including permafrost retreat, strong precipitation events, climate change, earthquakes or sudden internal failure. Measuring the dynamical interplay of erosion, sedimentation as well as quantifying their rates and fluxes is an important part of source to sink research but it is highly challenging and often limited by difficult terrain. Furthermore, these dynamical processes can threaten important mountain infrastructures and need to be understood and quantified for a better societal and engineering preparation to the natural hazards they pose.

We welcome contributions investigating:
- sediment mobilization and deposition
- links between erosion, weathering, and the carbon cycle
- concepts of dynamics and connectivity of sediments and solutes
- quantification of erosion, sedimentation, and weathering fluxes in space and time
- sediment travel times and transport processes
- interaction of stabilizing and destabilizing processes on the slopes
We invite presentations that focus on conceptual, methodological, or modelling approaches or a combination of those in mountain environments and particularly encourage early career scientists to apply for this session.

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.

In the past two decades, connectivity has emerged as a relevant conceptual framework for understanding the transfer of water and sediment through landscapes. In geomorphology, the concept has had particular success in the fields of fluvial geomorphology and soil erosion to better explain rates and patterns of hydro-geomorphic geomorphic change in catchment systems. Although much progress has been made in the understanding of the physical processes that control the flows of matter through the landscape, applying this understanding across a range of scales has long hampered progress.
This session invites contributions from all areas of geomorphology (incl. soil science and hydrology) illustrating or identifying the role of connectivity for geomorphology on a local, regional or global scale. Specific themes we would like to promote are:
- advancement of the theory of connectivity, including sound and unambiguous definitions of
connectivity and related parameters,
- methodology development for measuring connectivity in field and laboratory settings,
having a special focus on experiments for conceptualizing the different processes involved,
- the development and application of suitable models and indices of connectivity,
- determining how the concept can be used to enable sustainable land and water management
The session is organized by the IAG-working group “Connectivity in geomorphology” aiming to develop an international network of connectivity scientists, to share expertise and develop a consensus on the definition and scientific agenda regarding the emerging field of connectivity in geomorphology.

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.

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.

Obtaining quantitative information on the spatial pattern of soil redistribution during storms and on the spatial sources supplying sediment to rivers is required to improve our understanding of the processes controlling these transfers and to design effective control measures. It is also crucial to quantify the transfer or the residence times of material transiting rivers along the sediment cascade, and to reconstruct the potential changes in sources that may have occurred at various temporal scales. During the last few decades, several sediment tracing or fingerprinting techniques have contributed to provide this information, in association with other methods (including soil erosion modelling and sediment budgeting). However, their widespread application is limited by several challenges that the community should address as priorities.
We invite specific contributions to this session that address any aspects of the following:
• Developments of innovative field measurement and sediment sampling techniques;
• Soil and sediment tracing techniques for quantifying soil erosion and redistribution;
• Sediment source tracing or fingerprinting studies, using conventional (e.g. elemental/isotopic geochemistry, fallout radionuclides, organic matter) or alternative (e.g. colour, infrared, particle morphometry) approaches;
• Investigations of the current limitations associated with sediment tracing studies (e.g. tracer conservativeness, uncertainty analysis, particle size and organic matter corrections);
• Applications of radioisotope tracers to quantify sediment transit times over a broad range of timescales (from the flood to the century);
• The association of conventional techniques with remote sensing and emerging technologies (e.g. LiDAR);
• Integrated approaches to developing catchment sediment budgets: linking different measurement techniques and/or models to understand sediment delivery processes.

Transport of sediments due to the action of geophysical flows occurs in fluvial, estuarine, aeolian and other natural or man-made environments on Earth and has been shown to play important formative roles in planets and satellites such as Mars, Titan, and Venus. Understanding the motion and the causes of motion of sediments is still one of the most fundamental problems in hydrological and geophysical sciences. Such processes can vary across a wide range of scales leading to sediment transport and scour which can directly impact both the form (geomorphology) and, on Earth, the function (ecology and biology) of natural surface water systems and the built infrastructure surrounding them. In particular, the feedback between flow and sediment transport is a key process in surface dynamics, finding a range of important applications, from hydraulic engineering and natural hazards protection to landscape evolution and river ecology.

We welcome specific topics of interest that include (but are not restricted to):
-particle-scale mechanics of particle entrainment and disentrainment
-upscaling and averaging techniques for stochastic processes related to granular processes
-interaction among grain sizes in poorly sorted mixtures, including particle segregation
-momentum/energy transfer between turbulent flows and particless
-derivation and solution of conservation equations
-reach scale sediment transport and geomorphic processes
-shallow water hydro-sediment-morphodynamic processes
-fluvial processes in response to reservoir operation schemes

Landscape evolution is driven by surface processes that are forced by the interaction of climate, tectonics and topography. In this session we will explore records of these interactions from mountain belts to basins. Presentations cover both well established and novel techniques that utilize geomorphic, erosional, and sedimentary records to quantify rates and styles of deformation, climatic changes, and topographic impacts on surface processes. Presentations are arranged around three themes: (1) Topographic stress control on surface processes: Tectonic and topographically generated stress fields affect the rate of local surface processes. Surface processes in turn modulate these stress fields and shape landscapes. Theoretical and numerical models as well as laboratory and field studies explore these controls and potential feedbacks. (2) Tectonic and climatic influence on eroding landscapes: The coupling between tectonic deformation and climate governs the rate of surface processes. Morphometric analyses, low-temperature thermochronology, and cosmogenic nuclides all provide useful insights into the rates at which surface processes occur and the feedbacks among tectonics and climate. (3) Morphometric and basin records of landscape evolution: Erosional products of surface processes modulated by climate, tectonics and topography are routed through rivers to depositional sinks, which themselves may be subsequently affected by tectonic deformation. This topic explores how sedimentary records and morphometric analyses can be used to reconstruct climatic and tectonic forcing of landscapes.

Understanding how successive earthquakes accrue on individual faults to produce kilometer-scale displacements, build landscapes and activate cascades of geomorphological processes is still poorly understood. While large-scale geodynamic processes like subduction and orogenesis can be considered continuous over geological timescales (100 ka to Ma), they mostly operate discretely over shorter timescales (< 100 ka). Apparent quiescence is transiently interrupted by pulses of localised tectonic and geomorphic activity, which repeatedly interact and shape the landscape. Long-term permanent crustal deformation forms landscapes, yet geodesy primarily records short-term elastic strain. In this context, the surface expression on individual faults or active margins contains valuable information on both the endogenous and the exogenous processes at work, the complexity of which may be studied in long-term features (e.g. landscape evolution, mountain building, basin formation) as well as short-term data (e.g. geodetic monitoring, paleoseismology).

The scope of this session is to bring together state-of-the-art research efforts to better understand how the short-term rate variability that is often recorded on the Earth’s surface integrates to produce uniform large-scale active tectonic processes (i.e. subduction, collision, rifting, transform faulting). We welcome contributions combining observations and analogue & numerical modelling. We would also particularly value studies that bridge deformational processes operating over different spatial and temporal scales.

The study of active faults and deformation of the Earth's surface has made, and continues to make, significant contributions to our understanding of earthquakes and the assessment of seismic related hazard.
Active faulting may form and deform the Earth's surface so that records are documented in young sediments and in the landscape. Field studies of recent earthquake ruptures help not only constraining earthquake source parameters but also the identification of previously unknown active structures. The insights gleaned from recent earthquakes can be applied to study past earthquakes. Paleoseismology and related disciplines such as paleogeodesy and paleotsunami investigations still are the primary tools to establish earthquake records that are long enough to determine recurrence intervals and long-term deformation rates for active faults. Multidisciplinary data sets accumulated over the years have brought unprecedented constraints on the size and timing of past earthquakes, and allow deciphering shorter-term variations in fault slip rates or seismic activity rates, as well as the interaction of single faults within fault systems. Based on the this rich, but very heterogeneous knowledge of seismogenic faults, a variety of approaches have been developed to tranfer earthquake-fault geology into fault models suitable for probabilistic SHA. This session thus aims at linking field geologists, crustal deformation modellers, fault modellers, and seismic hazard practitioners.

In this session, we welcome contributions describing and critically discussing different approaches to study active faults. We are particularly interested in studies applying new and innovative methodological or multidisciplinary approaches. We hope to assemble a broad program bringing together studies dealing with on-land, lake or offshore environments, and applying a variety of methods such as traditional paleoseismic trenching, high-resolution coring, geophysical imaging, tectonic geomorphology, and remote sensing, as well as the application of earthquake geology in seismic hazard assessments. In addition, we encourage contributors describing how to translate fault data or catalogue data into fault models for SHA , and how to account for faults or catalogue issues.

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.

Biota affect hydrology, sediment transport, weathering and soil formation over variable temporal and spatial scales and thereby influence, hillslope, fluvial, coastal, and aeolian landscape form and dynamics. In turn, geomorphological and hydrological processes have large impacts on ecological processes by shaping topography and affecting water availability, which determines biological diversity and succession. Despite some advances, the conceptualisation and quantification of the processes, rates and feedbacks between geomorphology, hydrology and ecology are still limited.

Understanding these feedbacks between biological, hydrological and geomorphological processes is becoming increasingly important as new ‘building with nature’ projects emerge and also increasingly find their way into management (i.e. restoration projects). Physical, chemical and biological processes are in a constant state of flux, vary across both temporal and spatial scales and are regulated or enhanced by anthropogenic activities. Understanding of the biogeomorphological and ecohydrological effects of anthropogenic activities/ approaches and their wider socio-economic implications, remains largely rudimentary particularly in systems that are sensitive to human-induced or natural environmental change (e.g. high-mountain and polar environments, deserts, hillslopes, rivers and wetlands, salt marshes and deltas). As a result, there is a need to develop understanding around i) the magnitude and temporal persistence of anthropogenic stressors and their effects, ii) ecosystem resilience to anthropogenic stressors (including critical transitions in ecosystem state), and iii) new sustainable approaches to catchment management, such as utilization of ecosystem engineers for habitat improvements.

This session seeks contributions that are investigating biogeomorphologic interactions across all spatial and temporal scales, including experimental, field and computational/numerical modelling studies. We especially encourage interdisciplinary studies on river, and delta biogeomorphology, animal influences on geomorphic processes, chronologies of biogeomorphological change, and hillslope processes. Emphasis will be given to novel research on biogeomorphological feedbacks, on the quantification of feedbacks and associated rates, the linkage between terrestrial and aquatic environments, and the investigation of the resilience of coupled eco-hydro-geomorphic systems to human impact and climate change.

Public information:
We are happy to have two keynote speakers this year, one for fluvial biogeomorphology with Borbála Hortobágyi presenting on riparian plant response and effect traits on alluvial bars and one for coastal biogeomorphology with Olivier Gourgue presenting a new bio-geomorphic model approach accounting for subgrid-scale heterogeneity of biogenic structures.

Water is the defining feature of the habitable Earth; it is essential for all life as we know it. Evolution and maintenance of life in extremely water limited environments, which cover significant portions of the Earth, is not well understood. Akin to life, water-driven processes leave unique marks on the Earth’s surface. Mars is the only other planet currently known to bear the marks of water-driven surface processes, albeit fossil and of great age. The slow biotic and abiotic surface processes that may operate even in the virtual absence of liquid water are still essentially unknown. What is evident is that transient episodes of increased water availability can leave long lasting traces in extremely water limited environments. Intriguingly, those traces of bursts in Earth surface evolution have rarely been related to bursts in biological colonization/evolution, and vice versa, although both relate to the same trigger: water.

The objective of this session is to showcase research on the mutual evolutionary relationships between Earth surface processes and biota in arid to hyper-arid systems, where both biota and Earth surface process are severely and predominantly limited by the availability of water (rather than by extreme temperatures).
Solicited topics include (not exhaustive):
• fingerprints of biological activity at the (water) limit of the habitable Earth
• surface processes operating in the (virtual) absence of liquid water on Earth or extraterrestrial analogues (e.g. Mars)
• thresholds for biological colonization and concurrent fluvial transformation of landscapes
• tipping point(s) of biotically and abiotically controlled Earth surface systems
• chronometric and spatial information on the colonization and radiation of biota
terrestrial climatic records of (hyper-) arid regions on Earth

Arid to sub-humid regions contribute ca. 40 % to the global land surface and are home of more than 40 % of the world’s population. During prehistoric times many important cultures had developed in these regions. Due to the high sensitivity of dryland areas even to small-scale environmental changes and anthropogenic activities, ongoing geomorphological processes but also the Late Quaternary palaeoenvironmental evolution as recorded in sediment archives are becoming increasingly relevant for geomorphological, palaeoenvironmental and geoarchaeological research. Dryland research is also boosted by methodological advances, and especially by emerging linkages with other climatic and geomorphic systems that allow using dryland areas as indicator-regions of global environmental change.
This session aims to pool contributions from the broad field of earth sciences that deal with geomorphological processes and different types of sediment archives in dryland areas (dunes, loess, slope deposits, fluvial sediments, alluvial fans, lake and playa sediments, desert pavements, soils, paleosols etc.) at different spatial and temporal scales. Besides case studies from individual regions and archives, methodical and conceptual contributions, e.g. dealing with the special role of eolian, fluvial, gravitational and biological processes in dryland environments, their preservation over time in the sedimentary records, and emerging opportunities and limitations to resolve past and current dynamics, are especially welcome in this session.

In recent years there has been a growing emergence of interdisciplinary research areas concerned with investigating the dynamic and multifaceted interactions between biotic and abiotic components of aquatic ecosystems. Such is the acknowledged importance of these interactions, that quantifying and understanding the two-way feedbacks of interacting abiotic and biotic components is recognised as a key contemporary research challenge. However, the different terminology used by various disciplines highlights the separation rather than the overlap between disciplines. Further, in many instances the creation of new sub-disciplines (or research areas) is not developing the study field, but arguably is leading to the ‘reinvention of the wheel’ in parallel disciplines. Changing the traditional perspectives by bridging the gaps between disciplines is therefore key to bring considerable advances in aquatic research.
This session focuses on bringing together scientists from different backgrounds dealing with the effects of environmental (both biotic and abiotic) stressors on the aquatic biosphere, from individual organisms through to whole ecosystems with the aim of simulating truly interdisciplinary research. Several temporal scales ranging from a single event (e.g. response to hydropeaking, predatory attacks) to long term evolution (e.g. adaptation to climate change, ecosystem modification) may be considered. We expect strong contributions from researchers transcending a variety of disciplines such as geomorphology, engineering, ecology and environmental sciences. Emphasis is given to studies dealing with stressors driven by climate change or anthropogenic activities. In this context we particularly welcome contributions on consolidated or novel measurement techniques and modelling tools to assess the effects of environmental stressors (e.g. flow modifications, habitat alterations) on biota, such as vegetation, macroinvertebrates and fish, that cross disciplinary boundaries.

The session will include an invited keynote by Prof. Markus Holzner from ETH Zürich.

The Tibetan Plateau and surrounding mountain regions, known as the Third Pole, cover an area of > 5 million km2 and are considered to be the water tower of Asia. The Pan Third Pole expands on both the north-south and the east-west directions, going across the Tibetan Plateau, Pamir, Hindu Kush, Iran Plateau, Caucasian and Carpathian, and covering an area of about 20 million km2. Like the Arctic and Antarctica, the Pan Third Pole’s environment is extremely sensitive to global climate change. In recent years, scientists from around the globe have increased observational, remote sensing and numerical modeling research related to the Pan Third Pole in an effort to quantify and predict past, current and future scenarios. Co-sponsored by TPE (www.tpe.ac.cn), this session is dedicated to studies of Pan Third Pole atmosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere and their interactions with global change. Related contributions are welcomed.

Ecosystems, their abiotic and biotic compartments as well as their internal processes and interactions can be interpreted as the result of numerous evolutionary steps during system development. Understanding ecosystem development can be regarded, therefore, as crucial for understanding ecosystem functioning. This session will highlight research in this field within two parts.

The first part of this session is dedicated to experimental approaches to disentangle these complex processes and interactions of the Critical Zone. Well-known flagship sites in this sense are, e.g., Biosphere2 in the USA or Hydrohill in China. In addition, post-mining landscapes worldwide offer multiple opportunities for establishing artificial experimental sites for various purposes. Many experimental sites are based on hydrological catchments as integrative landscape units. Other large-scale experiments focus on selected parts of ecosystems which were modified or transplanted. This part of the session tries to create a global overview on large-scale landscape experiments on ecohydrological, pedological, biogeochemical or ecological processes within the Critical Zone.

The second part is related to the co-evolution of spatial patterns of vegetation, soils and landforms. These patterns are recognized as sources of valuable information that can be used to infer the state and function of ecosystems. Complex interactions and feedbacks between climate, soils and biotic factors are involved in the development of landform-soil-vegetation patterns, and play an important role on the stability of landscapes. In addition, large shifts in the organization of vegetation and soils are associated with land degradation, frequently involving large changes in the functioning of landscapes. This part of the session will focus on ecogeomorphological and ecohydrological aspects of landscapes, conservation of soil resources, and the restoration of ecosystem functions.

Invited talks will be given by Dr. Abad Chabbi (Director of Research at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research, INRA) on “Challenges, insights and perspectives associated with combining observation and experimentation research infrastructure“. Part two of the session is proud to announce the invited talk of Prof. Praveen Kumar (Lovell Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois, USA, Director of the US NSF Critical Zone Observatory for Intensively Managed Landscapes) on "Co-evolution of landscape and carbon profile through depth: understanding the interplay between transport and biochemical dynamics".

Some of the major coastal disasters in the past decade have clearly demonstrated how nature has a primary role in reducing the impact of extreme coastal flooding events generated by storms, which produce a high cost to society as well as a threat to valuable ecosystems. After Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in 2014, the Government financed USD22 million for the restoration of mangroves along the affected coastlines as evidence grew showing that where coastal vegetation was present, this attenuated the magnitude of flooding. Similarly, following Hurricane Katrina the US government invested USD500 million for the restoration of coastal national parks and salt marshes, accepting the proofs that marshes helped to reduce the damage, in association with dike and levees. Thus, it is a prerequisite to propose that the reconstruction of ecosystems should be done before an event strikes, with a philosophy of prevention rather than a remedy, with a philosophy of recovery. In Europe too, many member states have started to promote the recreation of coastal wetlands, considering setback strategies as well as the reconstruction and vegetation of coastal dunes, which act as the first line of defence to flooding. As it is stated in the recently released EU-Science for Disaster Risk Management 2017 Report, a number of European Commission-funded demonstration projects are now supporting ecosystem-based Disaster Risk Reduction, to prove the added value of such an approach compared with traditional engineering solutions.

This new approach demands: the development of new tools to model and design these reconstructed environments; merging physical concepts like bed erosion and sediment transport with the parameterization of biologically-induced phenomena, such as the role of emerged and submerged vegetation in attenuating wave and current energy; as well as the role of plants in stabilising/destabilising the morphology of coastal dune systems.

The session welcomes contributions covering modelling and monitoring aspects, including innovative approaches in coastal morphological models that account for the presence of the ecosystems, quantifying feed-back interactions between the physical and biological components. We welcome case-studies reporting recovery of the ecosystems and of the physical environment following major extremes such as tropical and extra-tropical storms. We also welcome contributions on case studies documenting new techniques for revegetation of submerged as well as subaerial environments.

Geodiversity is an interest for all geosciences, where the natural environment for our science is recorded and assessed. Geoheritage is the appreciation, valuation, and sustainable exploitation of part of this geodiversity for the good of the environment, for society and for science. Geodiversity and geoheritage provide essential links to other disciplines in the natural and social sciences, and they give geosciences a voice to the greater public and to local to global governance.
The EGU geodiversity and geoheritage session has been a large and vibrant meeting spot for a large diverse assemblage of geoscientists and stakeholders for over 5 years, growing with the increasing appreciation of the central role these topics have.
This EGU 2019 session aims to highlight the hottest issues and challenges pending or emerging, as well as inviting a broad range of topics, to engage in a far reaching discussion. As in previous years, we will hold a Splinter Meeting to further discuss hot topics, and will animate the poster session with a special picnic session.

Five main themes to tackle have been identified for 2019:

1) Society, climate change and geodiversity: the problems related to economic and environmental dynamics affecting geodiversity under changing climate and global development conditions. This topic has implications for and links to the IUGS RFG (Resourcing Future Generations) initiative and is a central theme for UNESCO Global Geoparks and World Heritage, and concerns also the management of all types of natural risk.

2) Geo- to ecosystem services and geoheritage: this follows from the first theme in exploring the possibility of developing a holistic and integrated approach to geodiversity, by considering geosystem services, in a perspective of sustainable management of geoheritage to the benefit of the whole environment.

3) Geodiversity, geosites and geoheritage assessments at multiple spatial scales: integrating data from global to local: the present lack of integration between global, regional and local geological and geomorphological data can limit the validity of geodiversity assessment and prevent its applicability for enhancement and protection of geoheritage. This subject relates to practical issues on different spatial scales for geodiversity immediately applicable to the protection of geodiversity, geoheritage and has links with the problems raised in the first two themes.

4) Virtual and Augmented Reality and Geoheritage: the strong innovation potential for this research field due to enhanced application of geoinformation technologies (GIS and Semantic Web). This use of global platforms, such as Google Earth, to outcrops scale augmented reality is a powerful research and educational tool that is developing fast. This theme will draw together demonstrations of the ongoing development of such techniques and their practical implementation into geodiversity and geoheritage sites.

5) Towards a fruitful integration/collaboration of international designations; this is a topic that we invite discussion about, and which is being hotly discussed between the major geoscience unions, associations, programmes and global instances like the UNESCO’s International Geoscience and Geoparks Programme and Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, the IUGS International Geoheritage Commission and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, especially through the Geoheritage Specialist Group/WCPA. It will form a subject of the Splinter Meeting, where these major unions will be open to discuss the theme.

Geodiversity and Geoheritage attract a broad range of people from all sides of geosciences and therefore we invite all this diversity to participate in the session.

The session is co-sponsored by the Working Group on Geomorphosites and the Working Group on Landform Assessment for Geodiversity of the International Association of Geomorphologists; ProGEO, the European Association for the Conservation of the Geological Heritage; the IUGS International Commission on Geoheritage; the Geoheritage Specialist Group of the World Commission on Protected Areas of the International Union of Conservation of Nature, the International Lithosphere Program, and the IAVCEI Commission on Volcanic Geoheritage and Protected Volcanic Landscape.
The session is closely linked to the those of Geoheritage Stones, and to Volcano Resources.

The originality of the session is to emphasize on the central position of human activities in environmental research (both terrestrial and atmospheric), as a driving factor and/or a response, by combining different spatio-temporal scales.
Continental environments (under various climatic conditions) experience profound societal and physical changes, which prompt scientists to investigate the complex interactions between environmental functioning and human activities.
The complexity originates from the multiplicity of factors involved and resulting spatial and temporal variabilities, of their multiple origins in time (historical integration) and/or legacy.
As a consequence, causal links in this societal-environmental relationship are difficult to establish but, it is fundamental to understand these causal links to adapt, conserve, protect, preserve and restore the functioning of the environment as well as human activities. From this point of view, the geographical approach highlights the relationships (or their absence) through the expression of the spatial and temporal trajectories of the processes studied by clarifying the observation of signals.
The ensuing issues on the relevance of indicators used in different supports of nowadays research (imagery, archives, models ...) are raised as a methodological open up.
In this context, oral and poster presentations dealing with any studies related to the following issue(s) are welcome:
- human forcing on the environments and environmental resilience
- response of socio-systems to environmental changes
- scenarios, prospective and retrospective models of the evolution of environments and human activities
- management modes (adaptive management) of anthropised continental environments, reciprocity, mutual benefits (ecosystem services), positive feedback

The session may include the following methodological aspects:
- in situ metrology,
- statistical and numerical modeling,
- spatio-temporal analysis,
- remote Sensing,
- surveys,
- landscape analysis,
- paleoenvironmental approach,
at various scales:
- spatial scales, from the station and site through watershed,
- time scales from the event to the Holocene.

Documenting the diversity of human responses and adaptations to climate, landscapes, ecosystems, natural disasters and the changing natural resources availability in different regions of our planet, cross-disciplinary studies in Geoarchaeology provide valuable opportunities to learn from the past. Furthermore, human activity became a major player of global climatic and environmental change in the course of the late Quaternary, during the Anthropocene. Consequently, we must better understand the archaeological records and landscapes in context of human culture and the hydroclimate-environment nexus at different spatial and temporal scales. This session seeks related interdisciplinary papers and specific geoarchaeological case-studies that deploy various approaches and tools to address the reconstruction of former human-environmental interactions from the Palaeolithic period through the modern. Topics related to records of the Anthropocene from Earth and archaeological science perspectives are welcome. Furthermore, contributions may include (but are not limited to) insights about how people have coped with environmental disasters or abrupt changes in the past; defining sustainability thresholds for farming or resource exploitation; distinguishing the baseline natural and human contributions to environmental changes. Ultimately, we would like to understand how strategies of human resilience and innovation can inform our modern strategies for addressing the challenges of the emerging Anthropocene, a time frame dominated by human modulation of surface geomorphological processes and hydroclimate.

Plastic contamination has been reported in all realms of the environment from the tropics to the polar oceans. The consequences of this contamination may be severe for ecosystems and could adversely affect ecosystem services such as fisheries and even human health. Our poor knowledge of plastics sources, their composition, sizes, pathways, hot spots of accumulation and ultimate fate prevents an assessment of environmental risks and the development of appropriate mitigation strategies. In order to understand current distributions of plastics and the way they evolve in space and time, much better observations and common consistent measuring methods are required but simultaneously, observations must be combined with computational models from their sources on land to rivers, estuaries, oceans and sea ice. This requires improved standardized accurate observations and the development of advanced modelling capabilities to quantify and predict contamination levels.

The session aims to set up a forum for multi-disciplinary discussions to create a global picture of plastic contamination in the environment and to suggest approaches for future research, monitoring and mitigation of plastic pollutions impacts. The session will provide a framework to advise legislators and industry on the best ways to reduce the risks of serious damage from this contaminant.

This session will draw together data on plastic contamination across all sizes of plastics, from nano- and micro-plastics to large plastic fragments, and across all environments and locations. It will combine observations with state-of-the-art computational modelling to promote the fast advance of research and improve our understanding of how plastic pollution affects environments worldwide. We invite contributions on new methods and field observations, laboratory experiments, novel modelling approaches, related scientific initiatives and projects. New ideas for citizen-science involvement and for mitigation strategies to reduce plastic contamination of the environment are especially welcome.

Invited speaker: Prof. Dr. Erik van Sebille

The Anthropocene is a topic of broad and current interest that is being discussed across various disciplines, within Earth Sciences, but also in the humanities and in the media. Its significance and usefulness as the youngest epoch of the Geological Time Scale is examined by the Working Group of the Anthropocene of the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy, part of the International Commission on Stratigraphy. A multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach for investigating and discussing the Anthropocene is feasible, including not only various Earth Sciences disciplines such as stratigraphy, sedimentology, geochemistry and palaeontology, but also archaeology, geography, geomorphology and various disciplines of the humanities and the arts. This session invites transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary contributions on the significance, usefulness and application of the term, as well as case studies including proposals on possible GSSPs (Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point) for a definition of the Anthropocene as part of the Geological Time Scale. The session will foster transdisciplinary dialogue and interdisciplinary cooperation and understanding on the scale and reach of anthropogenic changes within the Earth System.