Currently arid to sub-humid regions are home to >40% of the world’s population, and many prehistoric and historic cultures developed in these regions. Due to the high sensitivity of drylands to also small-scale environmental changes and anthropogenic activities, ongoing geomorphological processes under the intensified climatic and human pressure of the Anthropocene, but also the Late Quaternary geomorphological and paleoenvironmental evolution as recorded in sediment archives, are becoming increasingly relevant for geological, geomorphological, paleoenvironmental, paleoclimatic and geoarchaeological research. Dryland research is constantly 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 changes.
This session aims to pool contributions dealing with past to recent geomorphological processes and environmental changes spanning the entire Quaternary until today, as well as with all types of sedimentary and morphological archives in dryland areas (dunes, loess, slope deposits, fluvial sediments, alluvial fans, lake and playa sediments, desert pavements, soils, palaeosols etc.) studied on different spatial and temporal scales. Besides case studies on archives and landscapes from individual regions and review studies, cross-disciplinary, methodical and conceptual contributions are especially welcome in this session, e.g., dealing with the special role of aeolian, fluvial, gravitational and biological processes in dryland environments and their preservation in deposits and landforms, the role of such processes for past and present societies, methods to obtain chronological frameworks and process rates, and emerging geo-technologies.