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 human-landscape interaction provide valuable opportunities to learn from the past. This session is targeted at providing a platform for scientists with common interests in geomorphology and geoarchaeology and, in particular, the complex and integrated nature of the relationship between landforms, geomorphological processes and societies during the Anthropocene, and how this has developed over time at different spatial and temporal scales.

This session seeks related interdisciplinary papers and specific geomorphological or geoarchaeological case-studies that deploy various approaches and tools to address the reconstruction of former and present 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. 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. Furthermore, contributions may include (but are not limited to) insights about how people have coped with environmental disasters or abrupt changes; defining sustainability thresholds for farming or resource exploitation; distinguishing the baseline natural and human contributions to environmental changes. In this context, topics of different fields may be addressed in the session such as landform evolution, landscape sensitivity and resilience in the overall context of the interrelation between geomorphology and society, geohazards, geoheritage and conservation, geomorphological responses to (and evidence for) environmental change, and applied geomorphology. Moreover, issues of scale and hierarchies may be addressed, and methods and applications of dynamic rather than equilibrium ideas and metaphors. 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.

The Ancient Silk Road was one of the most important passages for trans-Eurasia exchange and human migration, which witnessed the rise and fall of ancient civilizations in Central Eurasia. In the central part of the Ancient Silk Road, where the climate condition is extremely dry and the ecosystem is very fragile. The climate and environment changes, especially the water resources change in this area, can significantly influence the spatio-temporal distribution of Ancient Silk Road network, the trans-Eurasia exchange and human migration along the Ancient Silk Road, and the civilization evolution of these ancient cities and towns among the Ancient Silk Road network. This session aims to explore the history of trans-Eurasia exchange, human migration, Ancient Silk Road network spatial change, civilization evolution and climate and environment change, as well as relationship among them in the areas along the Ancient Silk Road. We welcome presentations concerning these issues from multi-disciplinary perspectives, to promote the advancements of research in the field.

Public information:
Authors are kindly asked to upload display material by Sunday, 26th April, 2020, so that there is one week prior to the online chat for viewing the displays.

Program for the Live Chat on 4th May, 2020, 8.30 - 10.15 CEST (14:30–16:15 PM, Beijing)

14:20–14:30 PM, Beijing Sign in and introduction to session

1. D2537, EGU2020-21976（14:30-14:40 PM, Beijing）
Pollen-based quantitative land-cover reconstruction for northern Asia covering the last 40 ka
Xianyong Cao, Fang Tian, Furong Li, Marie-José Gaillard, Natalia Rudaya, Qinghai Xu, and Ulrike Herzschuh
2. D2539, EGU2020-3185（14:40-14:50 PM, Beijing）
An n-alkane-based Holocene climate reconstruction in the Altai Mountains, northern Xinjiang, China
Min Ran
3. D2542, EGU2020-6328（14:50-15:00 PM, Beijing）
Variation of bacterial communities in Muztagh ice core from 1869 to 2000
Yongqin Liu, Tandong Yao, and Baiqing Xu
4. D2549, EGU2020-13015（15:00-15:10 PM, Beijing）
Changes in the hydrodynamic intensity of Bosten Lake and its impact on early human settlement in the northeastern Tarim Basin, eastern Arid Central Asia
Haichao Xie
5. D2550, EGU2020-4601（15:10-15:20 PM, Beijing）
Holocene moisture variations in western arid central Asia inferred from loess records from NE Iran
Qiang Wang, Haitao Wei, Farhad Khormali, Leibin Wang, Haichao Xie, Xin Wang, Wei Huang, Jianhui Chen, and Fahu Chen
6. D2551, EGU2020-3196（15:20-15:30 PM, Beijing）
Holocene moisture variations in the Tianshan Mountains and their geographic coherency in the mid-latitude Eurasia: A synthesis of proxy records
Yunpeng Yang
7. D2553, EGU2020-5067（15:30-15:40 PM, Beijing）
Mid-late Holocene hydroclimate variation in the source region of the Yangtze River revealed by lake sediment records
Xiaohuan Hou, Lina Liu, Zhe Sun, Xianyong Cao, and Juzhi Hou
8. D2554, EGU2020-4965（15:40-15:50 PM, Beijing）
Late Holocene Varve Chronology and High-Resolution Records of Precipitation in the Central Tibetan Plateau
Kejia Ji, Erlei Zhu, Guoqiang Chu, and Juzhi Hou
9. D2555, EGU2020-3874（15:50-16:00 PM, Beijing）
The forced response of Asian Summer Monsoon precipitation during the past 1500 years
Zhiyuan Wang, Jianglin Wang, Jia Jia, and Jian Liu

Discussion and summery（16:00-16:15 PM, Beijing）

This session provides a platform for cross-disciplinary science that addresses the continuum of the river and its catchment to the coastal sea. We invite studies across geographical borders; from the source to the sea including groundwater, and across the freshwater-marine water transition. The session welcomes studies that link environmental and social science, address the impacts of climate change and extreme events, and of human activities on water and sediment quality and quantity, hydromorphology, biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and ecosystem services of River-Sea systems, and that provide solutions for sustainable management of the River-Sea social-ecological system.
We need to fully understand how River-Sea-Systems function. How are River-Sea-Systems changing due to human pressures? What is the impact of processes in the catchment on marine systems function, and vice versa? How can we discern between human-induced changes or those driven by natural processes from climate-induced variability and extreme events? What will the tipping points of socio-ecologic system states be and what will they look like? How can we better characterise river-sea systems from the latest generation Earth observation to citizen science based observatories. How can we predict short and long term changes in River-Sea-Systems to manage them sustainably? What is the limit to which it is possible to predict the natural and human-influenced evolution of River-Sea-Systems? The increasing demand to jointly enable intensive human use and environmental protection in river-sea systems requires holistic and integrative research approaches with the ultimate goal of enhanced system understanding.

Plastic pollution in freshwater systems is a widely recognized global problem with severe environmental risks. Besides the direct negative effects on freshwater ecosystems, freshwater plastic pollution is also considered the dominant source of plastic input into the oceans. However, research on plastic pollution has only recently expanded from the marine environment to freshwater systems, and therefore data and knowledge from field studies are still limited in regard to freshwater. This knowledge gap must be addressed to understand the dispersal and distribution of plastics and their fate in the oceans, as well as forming effective mitigation measures.

In this session, we explore the current state of knowledge and activities on (macro to micro) plastic in freshwater systems, including aspects such as:

• Plastic monitoring techniques;
• Case studies;
• Source to sink investigations;
• Transport processes of plastics in watersheds;
• Novel measurement approaches, such as citizen science or remote sensing;
• Modelling approaches for local and/or global river output estimations;
• Legislative/regulatory efforts, such as monitoring programs and measures against plastic pollution in freshwater systems.

Plastic contamination has been reported in all realms of the environment from the tropics to the polar oceans. Our poor knowledge of plastics sources, pathways and hot spots of accumulation prevents an assessment of risks to ecosystems and human health 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 systematically combined with computational models
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 platform for discussions to advise policy and industry on the best ways to assess potential harm to the environment and human health from this contaminant.
This session will draw together research on plastic contamination across all sizes of plastics from shelf seas to the deep ocean including ice covered seas. The forum will facilitate combining 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 field and remote 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.

There is no doubt that among many anthropogenic environmental stresses that are threatening the future of life on our planet, plastic pollution is one of the topics on top of the list. Since the beginning of the 21st century, there has been an accelerating trend in the research concerning the detection of microplastics and their negative impacts on the aquatic ecosystems and marine environments. However, studies concerning the role of plastics in polluting the terrestrial ecosystems, soils and plants are limited and numerous questions still need to be addressed.
The aim of this session is to bring together contributions on novel measurement techniques or analytical approaches to observe, detect or quantify plastics in soil-plant systems in any observational or process scales. Any studies highlighting how nano and microplastics accumulate or are transported in soil, contaminate groundwater, change chemical properties of the soil, affect soil biota or is adsorbed by plants roots are welcome. Presentations addressing how microplastics alter the rhizosphere condition by affecting the biological, chemical and physical properties of the soil are appreciated. One main purpose of this session is to gather researchers from the related disciplines to exchange experiences and finding innovative solutions for the current unknown problems and highlight the future research needs of the potential impacts of microplastics on soils and plants.

Last year sessions ITS6.1-3 on urban geosciences have largely confirmed the urgency to develop inter-/trans-disciplinary approaches of urban geosciences to respond to the huge societal demand to radically improve urban systems and their interactions with their environment and climate. The session ITS.6.1 focussed on the need to develop holistic approaches going beyond specialised domains such as urban meteorology, hydrology, climatology, ecology and resilience to grasp the urban-geophysical systems in their multi-component and multiscale complexity. This in particular indispensable to resolve long lasting questions like multi-hazard threats and upscaling of climate solutions. The recent IPCC report 1.5°C confirms the necessity to fully take into account the multi-component complexity of the urban-geophysical systems to achieve the urban and infrastructure transition, one of the main four system transitions to be achieved

The present session calls therefore for contributions on the development transdisciplinary concepts, methodologies and tools, as well as their applications to urban-geophysical systems in view of this transition. Jean Jouzel (former IPCC vice-president) will open this session.

Public information:
ITS2.10 invites you to actively participate (audio and/or pdf slide sharing) to the Great Debate: "Epidemics, Urban Systems and Geosciences"
Monday 4 May, 12:30-14:00 ECT
e-room COVID-19 https://vmi270945.contaboserver.net/b/pau-guy-rwr
(no app to upload, just click on this link).

This debate is focused on a major upset of the geosciences agenda, particularly those dealing with urban systems so that they contribute more to well-being and health. This great debate will be an opportunity to take stock and open up perspectives, particularly on epidemics and mobility, the dynamics of Covid-19, cities, health and geosciences

Do not miss the opportunity to e-debate with:
Theo Geisel (Max Planck Institute, Göttingen)
Jacques Demongeot (Université Grenoble Alpes)
Mark J. Nieuwenhuijsen (Institute for Global Health, Barcelona)

This debate is a follow-up of ITS2.10 and is organised with the UNESCO UniTwin CS-DC (Complex Systems Digital Campus).

In an urbanizing world with major land-use changes, both human (social and economic) and natural systems and their environmental challenges and constraints need to be considered in order to achieve sustainable urban development. Nature‐based solutions (NBS) in urban areas can make anthropogenic landscapes more ecosystem-compatible, enhancing ecosystem services, preserving biodiversity, mitigating land degradation, and increasing urban resilience to environmental changes. Maintaining and restoring ecosystems and green–blue areas within urban regions is important for a) increasing the well‐being of urban populations, b) providing multifunctional services, such as storm water mitigation and local climate regulation, c) improving energy efficiency of buildings, and d) mitigating carbon emissions. Implementing NBS in urban areas is of growing importance worldwide, and particularly in the EU political agenda, as a way to attain some of the Sustainable Development Goals (e.g. Sustainable cities and communities), and to reinforce the New Urban Agenda. Implementing efficient NBS in urban landscapes requires integrated and interdisciplinary approaches.

This session aims to enhance the scientific basis for sustainable urban development and resilience and advance knowledge of innovative nature-based approaches to face environmental changes (e.g. in land use and climate) and simultaneously provide better understanding of associated social-ecological interactions. This session seeks to:

• Better understanding of advantages and disadvantages of NBS in Urban environments;
• New methods and tools to investigate the role of NBS in the context of environmental change, in particular the effectiveness of NBS in enhancing urban resilience;
• New insights and perspectives of NBS, particularly their role in providing urban ecosystem services, such as storm water regulation and reducing greenhouse gas emissions;
• Identifying opportunities for and barriers to implement NBS, driven by current regulatory frameworks and management practices - and how the former can be reaped and the latter overcome;
• Presenting overviews and case studies of NBS projects that also involve the private sector and market-based mechanisms;
• Interactions between NBS and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs);
• Approaches for integrating actors involved in landscape design and urban planning.

Volcanic emission can have a strong impact on the Earth’s radiation budget and climate over a range of temporal and spatial scales, depending on the activity type (passive degassing and small magnitude to strong explosive eruptions).
It is now well known that strong explosive volcanic eruptions are a major natural driver of climate variability at interannual to multidecadal time scales. Assessment of volcanically-forced climate variability is complicated by many limiting factors, including the paucity of observed eruptions, uncertainties in volcanic forcing datasets for the current and pre-instrumental periods, limitations of proxy-based climate evidence, uncertainties of global aerosol model simulations and the apparent large inconsistencies in the responses to volcanic forcing simulated by current climate models. Quiescent passive degassing and smaller-magnitude eruptions on the other hand can impact on regional climate system. In addition, volcanic emissions may influence local-to-regional air quality, seriously affect the biosphere and environment, and the release of gas from soil may pose long-term health hazards. This session focuses on new results from integrative research on the climatic, environmental and societal impacts of the volcanic activity, including eruptions of Pinatubo-magnitude and larger, volcanic degassing and small eruptions.

We aim to highlight contributions conducted under the umbrella of the CMIP6 and in particular VolMIP activity that explore the responses of the coupled ocean-atmosphere system to volcanic forcing, from the characterization of the mechanism of volcanically-forced climate variability and on the potential role of volcanic eruptions on future climate variability and predictability by means of observations, climate reconstruction studies and modeling approaches. We also welcome contributions conducted under PAGES-VICS activities from research aimed at better understanding volcanic impacts on historical and modern societies. We also invite contribution to the current international SPARC-SSiRC program, observational and modelling studies of the 2019 Raikoke aerosol cloud and from recent field campaigns. We further invite new results from H2020 transnational accesses to volcanic platforms and cross-studies coupling volcanology/atmospheric/health hazards, aspects of volcanic plumes science, their observation, modelling and impacts.

This session is linked to the Pan-Eurasian EXperiment (PEEX; www.atm.helsinki.fi/peex), a multi-disciplinary, -scale and -component climate change, air quality, environment and research infrastructure and capacity building programme. It is aimed at resolving major uncertainties in Earth system science and global sustainability issues concerning the Arctic, Northern Eurasia and China regions. This session aims to bring together researchers interested in (i) understanding environmental changes effecting in pristine and industrialized Pan-Eurasian environments (system understanding); (ii) determining relevant environmental, climatic, and other processes in Arctic-boreal regions (process understanding); (iii) the further development of the long-term, continuous and comprehensive ground-based, air/seaborne research infrastructures together with satellite data (observation component); (iv) to develop new datasets and archives of the continuous, comprehensive data flows in a joint manner (data component); (v) to implement validated and harmonized data products in models of appropriate spatio-temporal scales and topical focus (modeling component); (vi) to evaluate impact on society though assessment, scenarios, services, innovations and new technologies (society component).
List of topics:
• Ground-based and satellite observations and datasets for atmospheric composition in Northern Eurasia and China
• Impacts on environment, ecosystems, human health due to atmospheric transport, dispersion, deposition and chemical transformations of air pollutants in Arctic-boreal regions
• New approaches and methods on measurements and modelling in Arctic conditions;
• Improvements in natural and anthropogenic emission inventories for Arctic-boreal regions
• Physical, chemical and biological processes in a northern context
• Aerosol formation-growth, aerosol-cloud-climate interactions, radiative forcing, feedbacks in Arctic, Siberia, China;
• Short lived pollutants and climate forcers, permafrost, forest fires effects
• Carbon dioxide and methane, ecosystem carbon cycle
• Socio-economical changes in Northern Eurasia and China regions.
PEEX session is co-organized with the Digital Belt and Road Program (DBAR), abstracts welcome on topics:
• Big Earth Data approaches on facilitating synergy between DBAR activities & PEEX multi-disciplinary regime
• Understanding and remote connection of last decades changes of environment over High Asia and Arctic regions, both land and ocean.

High-impact climate and weather events typically result from the interaction of multiple hazards across various spatial and temporal scales. These events, also known as Compound Events, often cause more severe socio-economic impacts than single-hazard events, rendering traditional univariate extreme event analyses and risk assessment techniques insufficient. It is therefore crucial to develop new methodologies that account for the possible interaction of multiple physical drivers when analysing high-impact events. Such an endeavour requires (i) a deeper understanding of the interplay of mechanisms causing Compound Events and (ii) an evaluation of the performance of climate/weather, statistical and impact models in representing Compound Events.

The European COST Action DAMOCLES coordinates these efforts by building a research network consisting of climate scientists, impact modellers, statisticians, and stakeholders. This session creates a platform for this network and acts as an introduction of the work related to DAMOCLES to the research community.

We invite papers studying all aspects of Compound Events, which might relate to (but are not limited to) the following topics:

Synthesis and Analysis: What are common features for different classes of Compound Events? Which climate variables need to be assessed jointly in order to address related impacts? How much is currently known about the dependence between these variables?
Stakeholders and science-user interface: Which events are most relevant for stakeholders? What are novel approaches to ensure continuous stakeholder engagement?
Impacts: What are the currently available sources of impact data? How can they be used to link observed impacts to climate and weather events?
Statistical approaches, model development and evaluation: What are possible novel statistical models that could be applied in the assessment of Compound Events?
Realistic model simulations of events: What are the physical mechanisms behind different types of Compound Events? What type of interactions result in the joint impact of the hazards that are involved in the event? How do these interactions influence risk assessment analyses?

Human interaction with the environment has gone through several stages of evolution. Being a product of the natural evolution of living organisms in the biosphere, Homo sapiens as a species has evolved in the geochemical conditions of the virgin biosphere. The rapid development of intellectual abilities of this genus allowed, first, to survive in adverse environmental conditions around the whole world, then, to cultivate the land, transform the entire system of biocenoses, and now to create a new habitat for man exclusively. The result was a significant geochemical transformation of the virgin biosphere, but a kind of punishment for the achieved progress was the emergence of a number of endemic diseases of a geochemical nature. Nowadays a variety of anthropogenic sources of pollution and their location in various natural geochemical conditions require not only constant monitoring of the chemical state of soil, water, air and food products, but also the development of spatially differentiated approaches to assessing the risk of provoked diseases. To solve this problem it is necessary concertedly interpreting a geochemical and medical information in order to assess the risks to human health associated with modern natural and anthropogenic geochemical features in urban and rural habitats. During session we propose to discuss:
1) global trends of health transformation in new geochemical environment of modern noosphere;
2) criteria for determining pollution level depending on environmental and geochemical constrains;
3) new approaches to assess the risk of diseases of geochemical nature in different countries;
4) the problem of mapping the risk zones, related to negative medical effects due to deficiency or excess of certain chemical elements or compounds.
Session co-sponsored by the European Association of Geochemistry.

Public information:
Human interaction with the environment has gone through several stages of evolution. Man as a species first survived in adverse environmental conditions around the world, then he began to cultivate the land, exploit other species and develop industry, changing the structure and composition of natural ecosystems, and now creates a new habitat exclusively in accordance with his own requirements. This activity leads to significant chemical pollution of the environment at the local, and in some cases at the regional level, which leads to disruption of natural food chains. This process is followed by the negative biological reactions of living organisms, including the man himself. These reactions and, in particular, endemic diseases of a geochemical nature can be regarded as a kind of punishment for the progress made. Emerging environmental problems require not only constant monitoring of the chemical state of soil, water, air and food products and identification of anthropogenic induced negative reactions, but also the development of spatially differentiated approaches to assessing the risk of triggered negative reactions and diseases. During our session, we will discuss:
1) global trends in health status in the new geochemical environment of the modern noosphere (the anthropogenic stage of biosphere evolution);
2) methods and criteria for determining the level of environmental pollution by metals, pesticides, radionuclides and pharmaceutical substances;
3) new approaches to assessing the risk of pollution and diseases of a geochemical nature in different countries;
4) the problems of identifying and mapping risk zones.
We kindly invite all interested parties to our session.