Plenary geomorphology division session and ECS award lecture. This session will consist of the Geomorphology Early Career Scientist Award winner’s lecture, talks from the GM OSPP winners, and additional invited talks.

This is a poster-only session that welcomes contributions about any topic related to geomorphology. If you do not find a GM session that is a good fit for your abstract, this is the place for you. We also particularly welcome contributions about the discipline of geomorphology in general, history of science analyses, interdisciplinary research, career pathways and opportunities, equality-diversity-inclusion (EDI) stories, educational and outreach topics.

Mountain environments are dynamic systems shaped by interconnected physical, biological, and chemical processes. Recent changes in climate, including elevation-dependent warming, shifting precipitation patterns, retreating glaciers, degrading permafrost and intensifying storms are reshaping these critical landscapes. These changes have a direct impact on ~35% of the global population, who live and work within or downstream of these regions. To address this complex, global challenge, this session aims to explore the diverse problems and approaches to monitoring, modelling, and predicting environmental change. It is essential to draw upon perspectives across the physical sciences to reduce uncertainties around future compounding hazard and risk. We welcome contributions focused on mountain system dynamics through, for example, remote sensing, numerical modelling, laboratory techniques, and field observations. This session is closely related to the objectives of the ‘Sediment Cascades and Climate Change (1)’ initiative and encourages an interdisciplinary dialogue between and beyond the fields of climatology, hydrology, sedimentology, and geomorphology.
(1) https://sedimentcascades.webspace.durham.ac.uk/

From time to time a concept enters geomorphology that is transformative in the way we think about and understand how landscapes function. One such concept that may fit this description is that of Magnitude and Frequency. In this session we seek to explore the question whether the concept of connectivity can be afforded the same status. Certainly the concept has found its way into a significant number of publications. Starting in the 1980s there has been a more-or-less exponential growth in the annual number of publications employing the concept. But have these publications been transformative or, as has been suggested, no more than old wine in new bottles? We invite contributions from across the discipline that span case studies of geomorphological research employing connectivity thinking through to broader methodological or conceptual discussions that critique the contributions connectivity has made to geomorphology.

Our planet is shaped by a multitude of physical, chemical and biological processes. Most of these processes and their effect on the ground’s properties can be sensed by seismic instruments – as discrete events or continuous signatures. Seismic methods have been developed, adopted, and advanced to study those dynamics at or near the surface of the earth, with unprecedented detail, completeness, and resolution. The community of geophysicists interested in Earth surface dynamics and geomorphologists, glaciologists, hydrologists, volcanologists, geochemists, biologists or engineering geologists interested in using arising geophysical tools and techniques is progressively growing and collaboratively advancing the emerging scientific discipline Environmental Seismology.

If you are interested in contributing to or getting to know the latest methodological and theoretical developments, field and lab scale experimental outcomes, and the broad range of applications in geomorphology, glaciology, hydrology, meteorology, engineering geology, volcanology and natural hazards, then this session would be your choice. We anticipate a lively discussion about standing questions in Earth surface dynamics research and how seismic methods could help solving them. We will debate about community based research opportunities and are looking forward to bringing together transdisciplinary knowledge and mutual curiosity.

Topical keywords: erosion, transient, landslide, rockfall, debris flow, fracturing, stress, granular flow, rock mechanics, snow avalanche, calving, icequake, basal motion, subglacial, karst, bedload, flood, GLOF, early warning, coast, tsunami, eruption, tremor, turbidity current, groundwater, soil moisture, noise, dv/v, HVSR, fundamental frequency, polarization, array, DAS, infrasound, machine learning, classification, experiment, signal processing.

Geomorphometry, the quantitative analysis of land surfaces, employs mathematical, statistical, and image processing techniques to measure and understand morphological, hydrological, ecological, and other characteristics of landscapes. This session explores the latest advancements in geomorphometry and geomorphological mapping, essential tools for investigating landscape dynamics on Earth and other planetary bodies.

The increasing availability of high-resolution geospatial data, including global Digital Elevation Models (DEMs), LiDAR, and Structure-from-Motion (SfM) models, opens new opportunities for detailed morphometric analysis, from mapping novel landforms to uncovering complex surface processes. However, these advancements also pose significant challenges in data handling, processing and analysis, necessitating innovative geo-computation techniques, high-performance computing, and new analytical methods tailored to diverse contexts.

This session welcomes studies that showcase advanced methods in geomorphometry, including high-performance and parallel computing implementations, as well as conventional computing, or resource-limited computing tailored to wider communities or citizen-science applications.

We invite contributions from all disciplines, including geomorphology, planetary science, natural hazards, computer science, and Earth observation, focusing on but not limited to:

- Applications of Digital Elevation, Terrain, Surface Models and Point Clouds
- Utilization of high-resolution LiDAR, photogrammetry, and satellite data
- Innovations in automated surface analysis, machine learning, and algorithm development
- Morphometry of Earth and planetary surfaces, including studies of surface change
- Techniques for collecting and deriving geospatial data products
- Extraction and analysis of geomorphometric variables
- Mapping and morphometric analysis of landforms and landscapes
- Modeling natural hazards on terrestrial, marine and planetary surfaces
- Geomorphometry applications in urban planning and cultural heritage
- Professional, commercial, and industrial applications bridging academia and industry

We particularly encourage interdisciplinary approaches and contributions that highlight professional and industrial applications, including software development and toolkits that facilitate the practical use of geomorphometric techniques. Join us to discuss the frontiers of geomorphometry and its applications across disciplines.

Sediment transport is a fundamental component of all geomorphic systems (including fluvial, aeolian, coastal, hillslopes and glacial), yet it is something that we still find surprisingly difficult both to monitor and to model. Robust data on where and how sediment transport occurs are needed to address outstanding research questions, including the spatial and temporal controls on critical shear stress, the influence of varying grain size distributions, and the impact of large magnitude events. Recent developments have provided a) new opportunities for measuring sediment transport in the field; and b) new ways to represent sediment transport in both physical laboratory models and in numerical models. These developments include (but are not limited to) the application of techniques such as seismic and acoustic monitoring, 3D imaging (e.g. CT and MRI scanning), deployment of sensors such as accelerometers, replication of field topography using 3D printing, use of luminescence as a sediment tracer, remote sensing of turbidity, discrete numerical modelling, and new statistical approaches.

In this session we welcome contributions from all areas of geomorphology that develop new methods for monitoring and modelling all types of sediment transport, or that showcase an application of such methods. Contributions from ECRs and underrepresented groups are particularly encouraged.

3D data are becoming ubiquitous throughout geomorphology, with the rapid expansion in the availability of high-resolution topographic data, such as from terrestrial or airborne LiDAR, advances in the availability of CT scanning for sedimentological analysis, and the collection of combined topographic and bathymetric data from rivers and coasts. These data take the form of high-density 3D point clouds or image stacks, which might be used to model a landscape, a sediment core, or a riverbed, for example. Using 3D data to extract meaningful geomorphic information involves challenges in data acquisition, storage, analysis, and computational processing, which requires the innovation of new techniques or algorithms to efficiently process and analyse large volumes of data.

This session welcomes studies taking advantage of 3D data to advance our understanding of geomorphology, landscape evolution, or sediment transport. Abstract submissions may address any type of 3D data, including but not limited to topo-bathymetric data, CT scanning, terrestrial and airborne LiDAR, and UAV data. Topics may involve data acquisition; methods for processing and/or segmenting 3D data; extracting features such as landforms, sediment grain sizes, orientations, and shapes; or topographic change detection and landscape evolution. Submissions from early career scientists and from those in underrepresented groups within the geosciences are particularly encouraged.

Imaging the Earth’s surface and reconstructing its topography to study the landscape and (sub-) surface processes have strongly evolved during the past two decades, sometimes separately in different scientific disciplines of geosciences. New generations of satellites, Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), LiDAR systems, Structure-from-Motion (SfM) methods and deep learning approaches have made 2D, 3D and 4D (time series) data acquisitions easier, cheaper, and more precise. The spatial, temporal and spectral resolutions of the measurements cover wide ranges of scales, offering the opportunity to study the evolution of the ground surface from local to regional scale with unprecedented details. Coupled with the development of optimized workflows to digitize and process analogue data, such as historical aerial photographs, geoscientists now have various sets of tools to better understand our rapidly changing environments and distinguish the anthropogenic and natural causes of these changes.

However, challenges still exist at both methodological and application levels. How to properly acquire images and 3D data in harsh, remote or non-ideal environments? How to deal with complex camera distortions? How to process unknown, damaged and/or poorly overlapping digitized analogue photographs? How to properly assess the precision of these measurements and take these estimates into account in our results and interpretation? How to deal with heterogeneous time series? These questions exemplify situations commonly faced by geoscientists.

In the present session, we would like to gather contributions from a broad range of geoscience disciplines (geomorphology, glaciology, volcanology, hydrology, bio-geosciences, geology, soil sciences, etc.) to share our views and experience about the opportunities, limitations and challenges that modern 2D/3D/4D surface imaging offers, no matter the physical process or environment studied. Contributions can cover any aspects of surface imaging, from new methods, tools and processing workflows to precision assessments, time series constructions and specific applications in geosciences. We would like to especially emphasize contributions that cover 1) novel data acquisition and processing approaches (including image matching, camera distortion correction, complex signal/image and point cloud processing, and time series construction), 2) data acquisition in complex and fast-changing environments, and 3) innovative applications in geosciences.

Over recent decades, geochronological techniques such as cosmogenic nuclides, thermochronology, radiocarbon and luminescence dating have improved in accuracy, precision and temporal range. Developments in geochronological methods, data treatment and landscape evolution models have provided new insights into the timing, rates and magnitude of earth surface processes. The combination of geochronological data from different techniques with numerical modeling has enormous potential for improving our understanding of landscape evolution.

This session includes studies ranging from erosion rates, sediment provenance, burial and transport times, bedrock exposure, surface uplift rates, cooling histories and landscape dynamics to technical developments and novel applications of key Quaternary geochronometers such as cosmogenic nuclides and luminescence. We welcome contributions that apply novel geochronological methods, that combine geochronological techniques with numerical modeling or landscape evolution analyses, and that highlight the latest developments and open questions in the application of geochronometers to landscape evolution problems.

Transport of sediments in geophysical flows occurs in mountainous, fluvial, estuarine, coastal, aeolian and other natural or man-made environments on Earth, while also shapes the surface of planets such as Mars, Titan, and Venus. Understanding the 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 - from the particle to the landscape - which can directly impact both the form (geomorphology) and, on Earth, the function (ecology and biology) of natural systems and the built infrastructure surrounding them. In particular, feedback between fluid and sediment transport as well as particle interactions including size sorting are a key processes in surface dynamics, finding a range of important applications, from hydraulic engineering and natural hazard mitigation to landscape evolution, geomorphology and river ecology.

A) particle-scale interactions and transport processes:
- mechanics of entrainment and disentrainment (fluvial and aeolian flows)
- momentum (turbulent impulses) and energy transfer between turbulent flows and particles
- upscaling and averaging techniques for stochastic transport processes
- granular flows in dry and submerged environments
- grain shape effects in granular flow and sediment transport
- interaction among grain sizes in poorly sorted mixtures, including particle segregation
- discrete element modelling of transport processes and upscaling into continuum frameworks
B) reach-scale sediment transport and geomorphic processes
- links between flow, particle transport, bedforms and stratigraphy
- derivation and solution of equations for multiphase flows (inc. fluvial and aeolian flows)
- shallow water hydro-sediment-morphodynamic processes
- highly unsteady and complex water-sediment or granular flows
- flash floods, debris flows and landslides due to extreme rainfall
C) large-scale landscape evolution, geohazards, and engineering applications
- natural and built dam failures and compound disasters
- coastal processes, e.g., long-shore and cross-shore sediment transport and the evolution of beach profile/shoreline
- reservoir operation schemes and corresponding fluvial processes
- design of hydraulic structures such as fish passages, dam spillways, also considering the impact of sediment
- dredging, maintenance and regulation for large rivers and navigational waterways

The Quaternary Period (last 2.6 million years) is characterized by frequent and abrupt climate swings and rapid environmental change. Studying these changes requires accurate and precise dating methods that can be effectively applied to environmental archives. Different methods or a combination of various dating techniques can be used depending on the archive, time range, and research question. Varve counting and dendrochronology allow for the construction of high-resolution chronologies. In contrast, radiometric methods (radiocarbon, cosmogenic in-situ, U-Th) and luminescence dating provide independent anchors for chronologies that span longer timescales. We particularly welcome contributions 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, e.g., Bayesian age-depth modeling. Applications may aim to understand long-term landscape evolution, quantify rates of geomorphological processes, or provide chronologies for records of climate change and anthropogenic effects on Earth's system.

Continuous monitoring of natural physical processes is crucial for understanding their behaviour. The variety of instruments available enhances data collection, aiding in the comprehension of these processes. Long-term data collection reveals trends and patterns, such as seasonal variations, multi-year cycles, and anthropogenic impacts (e.g., deforestation, urbanization, pollution). Conversely, short-term monitoring is vital for real-time decision-making, improving hazard assessment, risk management, and warning systems. Effective data analysis and innovative instrumentation contribute to developing mitigation and adaptation strategies. This session highlights the application of geosciences and geophysical instrumentation, including sensors in natural and laboratory environments, for monitoring natural phenomena and utilizing data systems to study these processes.
The session disseminates advanced research on natural physical processes and the use of scientific principles to address future challenges, including extreme climatic conditions. It encourages novel, interdisciplinary approaches to monitoring, aiming to establish historical baselines. This session seeks to bridge scientific knowledge and technological advancements to improve monitoring and understanding of natural physical processes. The session is inter- and transdisciplinary (ITS), covering topics such as:

1. Destructive and Non-Destructive Sensing Techniques, including contactless and remote sensing methodologies.
2. Monitoring System Developments for understanding hydro-meteorological processes, glaciers, soil erosion, settlements, liquefaction, landslides, earthquakes, volcanic events, and wildfires.
3. Real-Time Monitoring Systems, integrating geoscience data with Building Information Modelling (BIM), digital twins, robotic monitoring, and automation for improved decision-making.
4. Advances in Data Systems for efficient real-time monitoring and processing of large data volumes using Cloud Data Platforms, Distributed and Scalable Data Systems, Real-Time Data Processing, AI, Machine Learning, Data Privacy and Security, and Edge Computing.
5. Storage Technologies and Data Integration, including advancements in Graph Databases, Data Interoperability, and Multi-Model Databases.
6. Intelligent data analysis approaches to analyse accurate and precise interpretation of big data sets driven by various technologies.

Recent advancements in thermochronology have significantly broadened its applicability to provide insights on Earth-system processes across various geological settings and timescales. However, novel applications of thermochronometric techniques sometimes reveal limitations in our understanding of thermochronometric systems and flaws of their associated theoretical models. This session aims to present the state-of-the-art of mid- and low-temperature thermochronometric systems – including but not limited to the Ar/Ar, fission tracks, Raman dating, (U-Th)/He, 4He/3He and trapped charge dating systems – and assess their ability (and disability) to provide reliable datasets for geological interpretation. We welcome contributions that explore (1) theoretical and experimental work introducing new thermochronometers or aiming at improving our understanding of current systems, (2) innovative approaches to quantify and model thermochronometric data, (3) integration of thermochronology with field observations, remote sensing, geomorphological techniques, isotopic methods and modeling (numerical and analog), and (4) applications that constrain the timing, magnitude, and rates of processes affecting the lithosphere and shaping the Earth surface across various temporal and spatial scales. We particularly welcome contributions aiming at providing new constraints on relief evolution, deposition/erosion, source to sink processes, sediment provenance, weathering, faulting, hydrothermalism, tectonics, geothermal changes, formation of ore deposits. These insights will pose important implications for the broader Earth-science community.

Humans have been successfully mapping the remotest and most inhospitable places on Earth, and the surfaces and interiors of other planets and their moons at highest resolution. However, vast areas here on Earth remain blank spots and are located in areas that have not been accessed either through field surveys, geophysical methods or remote sensing due to technical and/or financial challenges. Some of these regions are crucial, as they hold the potential to uncover important geological and habitat information to facilitate future exploration efforts and an overall better understanding of our environment.
Such extreme and remote locations are commonly associated with the ocean floor, or planetary surfaces, but these extreme worlds might also be found in hot deserts, under the ice, in high-mountain ranges, in volcanic edifices, hidden underneath dense canopy cover, or located within the near-surface crust. All such locations are prime targets for remote sensing mapping in a wider sense. The methodological and technical repertoire to investigate extreme and remote locations is thus highly specialized and despite different contexts there are commonalities not only with respect to technical mapping approaches, but also in the way how knowledge is gathered and assessed, interpreted and visualised regarding its scientific but also its economic value.
This session invites contributions to this field of geologic mapping and cartography of extreme (natural) environments with a focus on the scientific synthesis and extraction of information and knowledge.
A candidate contribution might cover, but is not limited to, topics such as:
- ocean mapping using manned and unmanned vehicles and devices,
- offshore exploration using remote sensing techniques,
- crustal investigation through drilling and sampling,
- mapping campaigns in glaciated regions
- subsurface investigation using radar techniques,
- planetary geologic and geophysical mapping,
- geologic investigation of desert environments.
The aim of this session is to bring together researchers mapping environments that are hardly accessible or not accessible at all, thus often relying on geophysical or remote sensing techniques as main source for collecting data and information. We would like to focus on geological and geophysical mapping of spots for which we have no or only very limited knowledge due to the harsh environmental conditions, and we would thus exclude areas that are inaccessible for political reasons.

The past years have seen a renaissance in applications of meteoric cosmogenic 10Be and the 10Be(meteoric)/9Be(stable) ratio in the terrestrial, oceanic, and helio-magneto-atmospheric realms. Terrestrial applications include quantifying soil residence times, dating of landforms such as moraines and sedimentary sections, soil mixing and transport, catchment-wide erosion, weathering and denudation rates as well as subglacial erosion. Marine applications include reconstructions of cosmogenic production rates, ocean water circulation, trace metal input and global paleo-weathering. Many of these applications rely on knowing the meteoric 10Be depositional flux, which is provided by marine and ice core/lake archives. Conversely, 10Be concentrations and the 10Be/9Be ratio are used to reconstruct changes in the meteoric 10Be depositional flux related to helio- and geomagnetic modulation of the cosmic ray flux. For a better quantitative understanding of these records, modelling-based approaches encompass atmospheric production and delivery models that include aerosol chemistry and transport models and state-of-the-art physics-based 10Be production functions.

This session invites a broad range of contributions surrounding meteoric 10Be, with the aim to bring together colleagues from these different communities to stimulate discussion and foster collaboration. The contributions may include, but are not limited to, the “model side” (e.g. construction of atmospheric production/delivery models, their downscaling, and inter-model comparison as well as comparison to observational data, systematics/laws of meteoric 10Be production and depositional flux, effects of geo- and heliomagnetic variations), and the “observational side”. This may include studies relying on either knowing the depositional flux, such as meteoric 10Be/9Be in terrestrial weathering and denudation, dating of landforms, or reconstructing the depositional flux from geomagnetic field observations or from terrestrial and marine archives, as well as oceanic applications.

Hydrogeomorphic processes naturally act together and interact in a given space and time, creating cascades. Many regions worldwide are already experiencing changes in cascading processes, often driven by extreme events with severe impacts that may worsen under future climatic and environmental changes. The physical response to these cascades is hardly predictable due to their complex and non-linear nature, the interplay between different predisposing, triggering and controlling factors, and the rarity of these events.
Addressing the hazards and impacts resulting from the combination of multiple processes faces enormous challenges, primarily from a still incomplete process interaction understanding. In addition, expertise is scattered across disciplines (e.g., geomorphology, geology, hydrology, climate sciences) and beyond (e.g., civil engineering, social science). A better understanding of cascading processes under environmental changes and extreme events is of critical importance to deciphering impacts of past environmental changes and to develop and influence policy to face future challenges under a changing climate.

This interdisciplinary session focuses on cascading hydrogeomorphic processes and related hazards and on novel frameworks for understanding, monitoring, and modeling their complex feedback and interactions. A particular focus is paid on regions affected by diverse environmental changes and extreme events. We welcome scientific contributions in the domain of cascading processes, including (but not restricted to) the study of the link between extreme climatic forcing and hydrogeomorphic processes and surface processes complexity, such as connectivity or dis-connectivity between hillslopes and fluvial processes. We welcome studies from all climates and at all temporal scales; from the event scale to the long-term integrated impact of cascading processes on the landscape. We invite contributions showing novel monitoring, experimental, theoretical, conceptual and computational modeling approaches. Proposed management strategies to assess cascading processes-related hazards will also be well received.

Mountains are iconic landmarks, impressive sides, water sources, and home to many people. In the high elevation and over-steepened topography of the high mountain ranges such as the Alps, Himalayas, Andes, and Rockies, to name a few, catastrophic hazards unfold from high elevations, and trigger often associated events on their long way downstream, amplifying the effects even further. These events can be widespread or start in very confined and localized places. Typically, they are triggered by earthquakes, severe storms, and/or a concatenation of events like rapid warming of high-elevation snowpack, rain on frozen ground, the failure of a moraine-dammed lake, avalanches or landslides triggering further mass mobilization and so forth. As global warming progresses and equilibrium altitude lines of glaciers and freezing zones in general move upslope, large areas become ice-free and uncover large amounts of now mobile materials that were frozen and stable before. These freshly exposed, often easily erodible materials add now to the overall thread. Their location at high elevations and with the altitude-associated potential energy make these materials even more prone to compounding events in the future.

We welcome contributions investigating in space and time:

- catastrophic mobilization of sediments and cascading events
- hazards associated with deposition and runout features
- concepts of compounding and cascading dynamics
- connectivity between hillslopes and river networks
- feedback loops of stabilizing and destabilizing processes on the slopes

We invite presentations that focus on observational, conceptual, methodological, or modeling approaches or a combination of those in all kinds of mountain environments and particularly encourage early career scientists to apply for this session.

Flooding is one the deadliest and most costly natural hazards on the planet. Nearly one billion people are exposed to the risk of flooding in their lifetimes with about 300 million people impacted in any given year. As a result, flooding results in major impacts on both individuals and societies, with estimated costs of 60 billion (US$) annually.
There is a clear consensus that climate change is already causing increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall events, a trend that is expected to intensify in the coming decades. As a result, it is expected that there will be a further substantial rise in flood hazard in the coming decades, with societal exposure to this risk aggravated still further as a result of population growth and the encroachment of people and infrastructure onto floodplains.
However, climate change is not the only factor influencing the evolution of flood hazard. The carrying capacity of river and delta channels to convey storm runoff without inundating adjacent floodplains is also key, yet this conveyance capacity varies through time in response to changes in roughness and due to channel re-shaping by erosion and sedimentation. Other factors such as floodplain connectivity and, in lowland rivers and deltas, changes in sea level, are also of great importance.
This session invites contributions that explore the ways in which hydrological, geomorphological, and climatic drivers interact to determine flood hazard in rivers and deltas. We also welcome studies investigating how interventions such as flood barriers, managed floodplains and hard engineering are contributing to increases or reductions in flood risk. We especially encourage interdisciplinary studies involving experimental, modelling, and field-based approaches that are advancing methods and providing new insights into: (i) how the morphodynamic functioning of fluvial systems is driving changes in recent past, present, and future trajectories of flood hazards; (ii) the effects of human-induced perturbations on flood hazard and risk; (iii) climate related impacts on future trends in flood hazard; (iv) patterns, trends and drivers of flooding and morphological changes across present and historical records.

There is general agreement that ongoing Global Warming is leading to an increased frequency and/or intensity of some extreme weather and climate events. Such extreme events include, e.g., temperature extremes and droughts, heavy precipitation, storms, pluvial floods and river floods. Scientific studies on possible effects of the increasing frequency and/or intensity of such extreme weather and climate events on geomorphic processes and related earth surface systems are of utmost importance as they are addressing key challenges related to the environment in which we live.
Geomorphic processes refer to the generation, mobilisation, transfer and possible deposition of material (e.g., sediments and large wood), including the full range of terrestrial surface environments on Earth. The session invites contributions from earth scientists that may include a wide spectrum of approaches, methods and techniques, like, e.g., dating, sedimentary records, GIS, remote sensing, observational records, experimental studies, and modelling. We particularly invite oral and poster presentations that highlight contributions of geomorphological research in the ongoing debates on the effects of global environmental changes on geomorphic processes and in the development of suitable and sustainable mitigation, management and adaption strategies and actions. Regional studies are welcome in case they have wider systematic relevance and implications.

Natural hazards, such as floods and slope failures, mobilize large quantities of sediment in fractions of time. Yet, their impact on sedimentary systems and landscape evolution can last from the event scale to millions of years. Understanding sediment generation by natural hazards, as well as the interactions between natural hazards and other source-to-sink processes, is important for predicting the response of planetary surfaces to past and future environmental change. This session invites contributions on the role of natural hazards in source-to-sink systems over all spatial and temporal scales. Likewise, we are interested in how source-to-sink studies contribute to understanding past or future hazards.

We welcome research on a wide range of hazards including landslides, rockfalls, rock avalanches, debris flows, volcanic eruptions, flooding, tsunamis, and climate warming-induced hazards like thawing permafrost and retreating glaciers. We seek submissions that explore the roles of climate, tectonics, and human impacts on natural hazards and sediment dynamics. We especially encourage studies investigating dynamic feedbacks among natural hazards, sediment routing systems, and human modification of the landscape. We welcome contributions using any combination of field, experimental, theoretical, or numerical approaches.

Environmental disturbances such as extreme meteorological events or climate change induce hydro-geomorphic disturbance across different scales. Hydro-geomorphic disturbances, such as landslides, rockfalls, and avalanches, as well as extreme meteorological events such as extreme floods and wildfires, contribute significantly to the alteration of catchment dynamics and evolution. These disturbances trigger modifications from the hillslopes to the channel, modifying sediment, water, and vegetation regimes. Moreover, the interplay between these disturbances and climatic conditions can result in complex and unpredictable effects with potential severe consequences for citizens and infrastructures and challenging hazard assessment and catchment management.
This session aims to consolidate research on mountain catchments affected by disturbances, with a focus on the alteration of the hillslope and channel processes. It will investigate how hydro-geomorphic disturbances impact flood (including debris flows and debris floods) dynamics and influence management in mountain streams. Specific processes of interest include soil slides, permafrost thawing, rockfalls, (ice-)rock avalanches, debris flows, debris floods, wildfires, windthrow, and deforestation, along with their consequences on in-channel dynamics and the implications for management strategies. The session is oriented to collect contributions of specific in-situ case studies, process models and innovative tools and methodologies for improving hazard mapping. Emphasis will be placed on understanding how these disturbances affect flood patterns and behaviour, sediment transport, as well as the interactions with vegetation and large wood in mountain streams, possibly considering the effect of climate change. We invite contributions that explore these processes through case studies and field monitoring programmes, to discuss potential solutions, including innovative monitoring and nature-based approaches for mitigating flood hazards and hillslope instabilities.

Coastal areas are highly exposed to multiple natural and anthropic hazards. Ongoing global warming has triggered accelerated sea-level rise (SLR) and variation in terms of the intensity and frequency of extreme meteorological events. SLR, storms and tsunamis can generate temporary flooding and permanent submersion of the coastal areas, depending on the geomorphological and sedimentological (underwater and subaerial) features. Worldwide, low-lying coastal areas such as alluvial plains, deltas, and lagoons, are considered the most prone to be impacted by the expected increase in magnitude and frequency of the climate-driven processes (e.g., erosion, retreat, and flooding) with significant consequences on those ecosystems and human settlements. With the aim of identifying tailored adaptation activities and supporting the sustainable management of the coastal sectors, the scientific challenge is to assess the impacts of sea level variations on coastal natural and anthropic assets and to define potential coastal resilience over the next decades by the exploitation high-resolution datasets and advanced tools and technologies, which include remote sensing, machine learning, deep learning and computer vision methodologies. This session is devoted to collect contributions focussing on the expected global, regional, and local coastal modifications, the potential impacts of extreme meteorological and inundation events over time, as well as the socio-economic assets exposed to sea-level rise. Geomorphological studies on coastal dynamic and evolution by means of multidisciplinary methodologies and investigations as indicated are welcome:
a) modelling approaches for coastal risk assessment, b) influence of coastal dynamics on coastal infrastructures, c) multi-risk assessment of the coastal zone, d) the impact of erosion, flooding on natural environments, infrastructures, socioeconomic assets and heritage sites, e) application of innovative techniques of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for the analyses of data collected in coastal area, f) development of new techniques of remote survey and sensing for coastal environment.

Coastal areas are among the most dynamic elements of the physical landscape, strongly influenced by both short-term (e.g., catastrophic meteo-marine events, human impacts) and long-term (e.g., tectonics, climate change, volcanic activity) forcing factors. Therefore, the study of coastal proxies can offer a series of benchmarks for estimating processes and associated timescales.
Among the most studied processes in coastal areas are relative sea-level changes. Any landscape feature whose environment of formation is linked to a former sea level can be used as a sea level index point (SLIP). SLIPs can be of different types: geomorphological (e.g., marine terraces, shoreline angles), biological (e.g., coral reef terraces), sedimentary (e.g., beach deposits, saltmarshes or beach ridges).
Although there is a comprehensive understanding of the relative sea-level changes during the Holocene, our knowledge of such dynamics during past interglacials remains limited. This session invites the international sea-level community to present studies broadly related to Quaternary interglacials. We welcome contributions on new field or remote sensing data, synthesis and databases specifically related to sea-level changes (including geochronological methods). We also welcome contributions exploring other coastal processes at the same timescale, focussing on wave conditions, extreme coastal events, and coastal modelling.
This session falls under the purview of PALSEA-Next, a working group of the International Union for Quaternary Sciences (INQUA) and Past Global Changes (PAGES) and from the WARMCOASTS project, funded by the European Research Council under the EU Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (grant agreement n. 802414).

Alpine mass movements, rockfalls, rockslides and rock avalanches are among the primary hazards and drivers of landscape evolution in steep terrain. The physics of rock slope degradation and dynamics of failure and transport mechanisms define the hazards and possible mitigation strategies and enable retrodictions and predictions of events and controls.

This session aims to bring together state-of-the-art methods for predicting, assessing, quantifying, and protecting against rock slope hazards across spatial and temporal scales. We seek innovative contributions from investigators dealing with all stages of rock slope hazards, from weathering and/or damage accumulation, through detachment, transport and deposition, and finally to the development of protection and mitigation measures. In particular, we seek studies presenting new theoretical, numerical or probabilistic modelling approaches, novel data sets derived from laboratory, in situ, or remote sensing applications, and state-of-the-art approaches to social, structural, or natural protection measures. We especially encourage contributions from geomechanics/rock physics, geodynamics, geomorphology and tectonics to better understand how rockfall, rockslides and rock avalanches act across scales.

Innovative contributions dealing with mass movement predisposition, detachment, transport, and deposition are welcome on (i) insights from field observations and/or laboratory experiments; (ii) statistical methods and/or artificial intelligence to identify and mapped mass movements; (iii) new monitoring approaches (in-situ and remote sensing) applied at different spatial and temporal scales; (iv) models (from conceptual frameworks to theoretical and/or advanced numerical approaches) for the analysis and interpretation of the governing physical processes; (v) develop strategies applicable for hazard assessment, mitigation and protection. We also aim at triggering discussions on preparedness and risk reduction, and studies that integrate social, structural, or natural protection measures.

At EGU 2025, this session has its 20th edition. Since 2006, it builds a growing community and network at EGU and beyond for senior scientists as well as young researches.

Slope instability phenomena – affecting diverse materials with a variety of mechanisms (e.g., earthslides, rockfalls, debris flows) – are recognised to be driven by weather patterns largely differing in terms of variables (precipitation, temperature, snow melting) and significant time span (from a few minutes up to several months). However, local modifications induced by human intervention, such as socio-economic-induced land use/cover changes, reduced soil management due to land abandonment, or the implementation and maintenance of Nature-Based Solutions, are recognised to play a key role in defining landslide hazard and risk. In turn, these local human-induced factors can be strongly influenced by weather dynamics. For instance, hydrological and thermal regimes regulate vegetation suitability, then land cover and, in turn, landslide hazard and risk.
A clear and robust evaluation of how ongoing and expected global warming and the resulting climate change can affect these factors and, hence, landslide risk represents a clear key need for practitioners, communities, and decision-makers.
This session aims to provide a discussion forum for studies concerning the analysis of the role of climate-related variables and slope-atmosphere interaction on landslide triggering, propagation, and activity and/or on the effectiveness of protection measures across different geographic contexts and scales. Test cases and investigations (by exploiting monitoring and modelling) to evaluate ongoing and future landslide activity are welcome. Furthermore, investigations focused on data-driven approaches (Machine Learning, AI), through which the variations induced by climate and environmental changes on triggering, dynamics, and hazard are analysed, are greatly welcome.

Large mass movements in rock, debris, and ice in glacial masses, represent enormous risks. These complex systems are difficult to describe, investigate, monitor, and model. Hence a reliable model of these phenomena requires acquisition and analysis of all available data to support successive steps up to the management of Early Warning systems.
Large instabilities affect all materials (rock, weak rocks, debris, ice), from low to high altitudes, evolving as slow or fast complex mass movements. This and the complex dependency on forcing factors result in different types and degrees of hazard and risk. Some aspects of these instabilities are still understudied and debated, because of difficult characterization and few cases thoroughly studied. Regional and temporal distribution, relationships with controlling and triggering factors are poorly understood resulting in poor predictions of behavior and evolution under present and future climates. How will it change their state of activity under future climatic changes? How this will impact on existing structures and infrastructures? How can we improve our predictions? Relationships among geological and hydrological boundary conditions and displacements are associated with the evolution in space and time of thermo-hydro-mechanical controls as well as the properties of the unstable mass. Even for well-studied and active phenomena warning thresholds are mostly qualitative, based on semi-empirical approaches. Hence a multidisciplinary approach and robust monitoring data are needed. Many modeling approaches can be applied to evaluate instability and failure, considering triggerings, and failure propagation, leading to rapid mass movements. Nevertheless, these approaches are still phenomenological and have difficulty explaining the observed behavior. The impacts of such instabilities on structures represent a relevant risk and an opportunity in terms of investigations and quantitative measurements of the effects on tunnels, dams, and roads. The design of these structures and knowledge of their expected performance are fundamental.
We invite to present case studies, share views and data, discuss monitoring and modeling approaches and tools, to introduce new approaches for threshold definition, including advanced numerical modeling, Machine Learning for streamline and offline data analyses, development of monitoring tools, and dating or investigation techniques.

The growing availability of multi-temporal landslide inventories, for example from multi-epoch LiDAR, InSAR, and monitoring, has precipitated a shift from static landslide susceptibility evaluations to a better understanding of both spatial and temporal variations in landslide activity. In parallel, the development of regional to global hydroclimatic models, re-analysis products, next generation remote sensing products, and compilations of in-situ observations (such as ERA5, SMAP-L4, and GSDR) is allowing researchers to obtain a broader understanding of the hydro-meteorological conditions that affect landslide activity: for example soil moisture, snow melt, precipitation, and meso and synoptic scale weather systems. Currently, researchers and practitioners are exploring how linkages between historical landslide activity and hydro-meteorological drivers can be integrated to improve data driven models for landslide situational awareness and early warning systems. This session seeks to bring together a wide range of perspectives from geomorphology, hydrology, meteorology, remote sensing, data science and beyond to share experiences and to spur future research advances and operational application development.

Subtopics may include:
• Constructing multi-temporal landslide activity data sets utilizing remote sensing data and/or point source terrestrial data
• Linking regional landslide activity trends and variability to hydro-meteorological, geological, morphological, or other conditions.
• Evaluating the suitability of different hydroclimatic models, re-analysis datasets, remote sensing products, and in-situ observations to different landslide and terrain types or research objectives
• Approaches to quantifying linkages between hydro-meteorological drivers and landslide activity
• Development and testing of new algorithms and infrastructure, including machine and deep learning approaches, to support weather-related landslide situational awareness and warning

All the forecasts are connected to some level of uncertainty. When the forecast is applied to natural hazards, existing uncertainty may become critical, as significant changes in the forecasts may play a major role in the definition of risk reduction actions.

While this is pervasive across all natural hazards, significantly different approaches have been defined in the different disciplines of Earth Sciences, both in the definition of methods to quantify uncertainty, and in the selection of specific communication strategies for decision-makers or for the general public. Indeed, the need of accounting for and communicate uncertainty, coupled with the capacity of developing adequate models to this aim, strongly influenced how and at which level uncertainty has been included and communicated in forecasting models.
This session is dedicated to foster cross-discipline exchange of existing experiences as well as ongoing efforts in the quantification, communication, and use of uncertainty in decision-making along the different disciplines of Earth Sciences.

Landslides can trigger catastrophic consequences, leading to loss of life and assets. In specific regions, landslides claim more lives than any other natural catastrophe. Anticipating these events proves to be a monumental challenge, encompassing scientific curiosity and vital societal implications, as it provides a means to safeguard lives and property.
This session revolves around methodologies and state-of-the-art approaches in landslide prediction, encompassing aspects like location, timing, magnitude, and the impact of single and multiple slope failures. It spans a range of landslide variations, from abrupt rockfalls to rapid debris flows, and slow-moving slides to sudden rock avalanches. The focus extends from local to global scales.

Contributions are encouraged in the following areas:

Exploring the theoretical facets of predicting natural hazards, with a specific emphasis on landslide prognosis. These submissions may delve into conceptual, mathematical, physical, statistical, numerical, and computational intricacies.
Presenting applied research, supported by real-world instances, that assesses the feasibility of predicting individual or multiple landslides and their defining characteristics, with specific reference to early warning systems and methods based on monitoring data and time series of physical quantities related to slope stability at different scales.
Evaluating the precision of landslide forecasts, comparing the effectiveness of diverse predictive models, demonstrating the integration of landslide predictions into operational systems, and probing the potential of emerging technologies.

Should the session yield fruitful results, noteworthy submissions may be consolidated into a special issue of an international journal.

Geo-hydrogeological hazards pose a serious threat around the world, compromising the safety of human life, the protection of economic activities, ecosystems and biodiversity, environmental and archaeological assets. Among natural disasters, those related to geo-hydrological phenomena, such as floods and slope instabilities, play a particularly critical role in mountainous regions. Surface landslides, rapid earth/debris flows, and soil erosion are the mass wasting phenomena most influenced by rainfall events over the slopes, while overflowing of water onto dry lands and sediment transport during high flow events are processes driven by hydrology at the catchment scale. The variations in intensity, frequency and duration of rainfalls due to climate change could translate into an exacerbation of ground effects and substantial increase in the risk in the urbanised areas, therefore in the costs associated with geo-hydrological phenomena. Gaining insight the factors that influence the development of a weather-related phenomenon and the impact on exposed elements and therefore assessing risk is essential for developing resilient communities capable of facing future climatic challenges.
We invite contributions on all facets of geo-hydrological hazard in the context of climate variability, exploring the theoretical aspects of prediction up to the consequent space-time landscape evolution and risk management. This includes studies on individual hazards, multiple hazards, or interactions and cascades of hazards. We also encourage contributions that explore the application of scientific methods in practice and the effective use of data to mitigate risks.

Contributions focusing on, but not limited to, novel developments and findings on the following topics are particularly encouraged, even presenting case studies:
- Characteristics of weather and precipitation patterns leading to extreme and high impact events;
- Advanced methodologies and cutting-edge techniques for predicting geo-hydrological phenomena, covering elements such as impact location, timing, magnitude, spatial evolution etc.;
- Ground effects assessment and landscape evolution in different risk contexts of both single and multiple events;
- Relationships between the climate change and the increasing hazard phenomena in their complexity and heterogeneity;
- Vulnerability and hazard mitigation procedures;
- Strategies for increasing preparedness, and self-protective response as preventive actions.

Extreme hydro-meteorological events drive many hydrologic and geomorphic hazards, such as floods, landslides and debris flows, which pose a significant threat to modern societies on a global scale. The continuous increase of population and urban settlements in hazard-prone areas in combination with evidence of changes in extreme weather events lead to a continuous increase in the risk associated with weather-induced hazards. To improve resilience and to design more effective mitigation strategies, we need to better understand the triggers of these hazards and the related aspects of vulnerability, risk, mitigation and societal response.
This session aims at gathering contributions dealing with various hydro-meteorological hazards that address the aspects of vulnerability analysis, risk estimation, impact assessment, mitigation policies and communication strategies. Specifically, we aim to collect contributions from academia, industry (e.g. insurance) and government agencies (e.g. civil protection) that will help identify the latest developments and ways forward for increasing the resilience of communities at local, regional and national scales, and proposals for improving the interaction between different entities and sciences.
Contributions focusing on, but not limited to, novel developments and findings on the following topics are particularly encouraged:
- Physical and social vulnerability analysis and impact assessment of hydro-meteorological hazards
- Advances in the estimation of socioeconomic risk from hydro-meteorological hazards
- Characteristics of weather and precipitation patterns leading to high-impact events
- Relationship between weather and precipitation patterns and socio-economic impacts
- Socio-hydrological studies of the interplay between hydro-meteorological hazards and societies
- Hazard mitigation procedures
- Strategies for increasing public awareness, preparedness, and self-protective response
- Impact-based forecast, warning systems, and rapid damage assessment.
- Insurance and reinsurance applications

Evolving climate patterns and land use changes, coupled with improved monitoring capabilities, are contributing to a notable increase in seismic and infrasound detections of surficial mass movements. These events — landslides, rock/ice/snow avalanches, debris flows, lahars, pyroclastic density currents, glacial processes, etc. — can pose significant hazards, and there is a pressing need to better understand, characterize, and mitigate them. While these sources are not routinely monitored in real-time like earthquakes, ever-expanding seismic and infrasound networks offer opportunities for rapid early warning and post-event detection and analysis. Improved data sources and techniques can also help search for reliable precursors to catastrophic failure and can be used to characterize existing slope instabilities.

This session explores innovative methods that improve our comprehension of these non-earthquake seismic and acoustic sources and enhance our ability to characterize and monitor them and mitigate their associated hazards. We invite presentations that investigate various types of surficial mass movements by leveraging seismic and/or infrasound techniques, including the application of machine learning or inclusion of ancillary constraints through ground-based, airborne, and satellite imagery or other geophysical data streams. Topics of interest encompass — but are not limited to — source detection, location, characterization, modeling, and classification; precursory signal analysis; monitoring; innovative instrumentation (e.g., distributed acoustic sensing, nodal sensors, large-N arrays/networks); and hazard mitigation.

Wildfires are a worldwide phenomenon with many environmental, social, and economic implications, which are expected to escalate as a consequence of climate change and land abandonment, management, and planning, further promoting land degradation and decreasing ecosystem services supply.
The current situation demands from the scientific community the study of wildfire effects on the ecosystems and the development of integrated tools for pre- and post-fire land management practices that reduce the vulnerability to wildfires and their impacts. However, this research urges the attention not only from researchers, but also from stakeholders and policy-makers all over the world, since basic resources such as raw materials, water, and soils as well as habitats are at stake.
This session aims at gathering researchers on the effects of wildfires on ecosystems, from wildfire prevention to post-fire mitigation. We kindly invite laboratory, field, and/or modelling studies involving the following topics:
i. prescribed and/or experimental fires;
ii. fire severity and burn severity;
iii. fire effects on vegetation, soil and water;
iv. post-fire hydrological and erosive response;
v. post-fire management and mitigation;
vi. socio-economic studies on pre- and post-fire land management;
vii. fire risk assessment and modelling.

Nature-based solutions and eco-engineering interventions aim to work with natural processes to mitigate increased incidence in hydrometeorological extremes due to climate change. Examples of nature-based solutions include the addition of large wood or vegetation patches, floodplain reconnection, and the creation of blue-green urban infrastructures. The aims and design strategies for these interventions build on hydrological, biogeomorphic, and geochemical processes at multiple spatial and temporal scales including ecohydraulic interactions with vegetated canopy flows and large wood, sediment transport, and feedbacks with ecologic processes. Implementation and assessment frameworks for nature-based solutions are rapidly developing, with many challenges and open questions remaining. Therefore, an improved understanding of basic process-based function of nature-based solution designs and development of modelling strategies are urgently needed to ensure intervention efficacy meet the challenge of mitigating increasing extremes in a changing climate.

This session aims to form a broad range of cross-sector scholarship, including academic researchers, water managers, community stakeholders, and independent researchers. We invite you to submit abstracts broadly related to the following topics:
• Design of resilient nature-based solutions under a changing climate (floods versus droughts)
• Frameworks to evaluate nature-based solutions
• Modelling strategies of nature-based solutions: physical and numerical
• Field investigations of nature-based solutions including remote-sensing
• Implications of nature-based solutions on flow structures and sediment transport
• Ecological impacts and ecosystem services of nature-based solutions
• Management and maintenance of nature-based solutions
• Case studies of successful nature-based solution strategies including socio-economic aspects

Biogeomorphology explores the complex feedbacks between life and landscapes, seeking to understand how geomorphic processes govern, and are governed by, biological processes. Uniting our understanding of biotic and abiotic systems and processes remains challenging, due in part to the complexity of the systems being studied, but also due to the interdisciplinarity of biogeomorphology, which draws insights, methods and theory from across a range of scientific domains. Understanding the interplay between biotic and abiotic processes, at continental to hillslope scales, is critical to our understanding of landscape and ecosystem function, sediment transport dynamics, landscape restoration and rewilding, hazard mitigation and landscape evolution modelling. The urgency with which we study these processes is also heightened by the increasing intensity of the climate crisis, with rewilding and landscape restoration increasingly being advanced as options to mitigate climate impacts.



This session aims to bridge the disciplinary divide between geoscientists, ecologists, soil scientists, engineers and geomorphologists, bringing together researchers and practitioners to share expertise and insights from their work across a range of domains and contexts. We welcome submissions exploring a broad range of landscape and ecosystem settings at scales ranging from catchment to continent and from single species to multi-species studies. Topics may include, but are not limited to: novel numerical, computational, field or laboratory methods; case studies of biogeomorphology applications; quantification and monitoring of biogeomorphic processes; feedbacks between biotic and abiotic systems; hazard management and landscape and ecosystem management approaches. We particularly encourage the participation of early-career researchers and PhD students working in these fields, as we aim to grow the network of researchers working on this topic across disciplines.

It is clear that human impact on earth surface processes is almost ubiquitous. At present the scale of human impacts upon geomorphic systems is considerably larger than at any point in the past with a plenitude of either direct or indirect impacts on the systems’ structure and function. This session aims to provide a platform for studies on the role of humans as agents of geomorphic change and associated environmental feedbacks. We also welcome studies which conceptionally discuss the importance of geomorphology as a discipline within the overall Anthropocene debate. We look for both, conceptional contributions, and quantitative approaches, e.g. based on modelling and/or field surveys, addressing the effects of human agency on all geomorphological process domains (aeolian, fluvial, cryospheric, coastal, hillslope). This could include, but is not limited to the effects of construction works, river engineering, land use/management, or climate change. Moreover, this session especially welcomes studies contrasting natural and human dominated systems.

Human activity became a major player of global climatic and environmental change in the course of the late Quaternary, during the Anthropocene. Consequently, it is crucial to understand these changes through the study of former human-environmental interactions at different spatial and temporal scales. 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, provides valuable opportunities to learn from the past. To do so, cross-disciplinary studies in Geoarchaeology offer a chance to better understand the archaeological records and landscapes in context of human culture and the hydroclimate-environment nexus over time. 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 policies for addressing the challenges of the emerging Anthropocene, a time frame dominated by human modulation of surface geomorphological processes and hydroclimate.

The integration of geological and archaeological methodologies proves valuable for the study of human activity and landscape evolution, especially as the application of advanced analytical methods becomes more frequent. The formation of archaeological sites is closely coupled with geomorphological processes resulting in the deposition, preservation, reworking and exposure of sediments and remains of human activity. In addition to its anthropogenic record, an archaeological site can be investigated as an archive recording the interaction of fluvial, aeolian and tectonic events that operate on various temporal and spatial scales. However, despite the shared perspectives of archaeological and geomorphological studies, those two fields are not commonly integrated within a unified holistic framework, which limits their impact.

This session is open to a wide range of studies that integrate the study of geomorphological, sedimentological and environmental proxies at archaeological sites, alongside investigations that incorporate geological approaches to address archaeological and geomorphological questions. The goal is set to provide a platform for describing common challenges and achievements that may lead to synergistic outcomes and outline directions for future cooperation and for the establishment of a common language. The session is not restricted to any specific time period or geographical area, but rather wishes to highlight methodological novelties and common challenges shared by both disciplines.

Geodiversity encompasses all the natural abiotic elements of the Earth, such as the range of geological, geomorphological, hydrological, and pedological features and processes. Human societies have utilized these elements for thousands of years. It provides essential ecosystem services and benefits, offering spaces for societal development and goods essential for life. Geodiversity also plays a significant role in the historical and religious context and traditional practices of various communities.
'Geoheritage' refers to elements of geodiversity considered worthy of protection, offering insights into Earth's history. Understanding this history is vital for comprehending current climate and environmental changes and fostering climate-resilient societies. Geoheritage and geodiversity are important in a sustainable society, significantly contributing, e.g., through geotourism, to the attainment of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.
Several initiatives have been developed to promote geodiversity and geoheritage. For instance, in 2021, UNESCO endorsed the International Geodiversity Day, which has been celebrated globally on October 6th since 2022. Furthermore, the Zumaia Declaration of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) in October 2022 emphasized the importance of promoting and preserving geoheritage and geodiversity for societal benefit.
In this context, the session aims to offer a comprehensive platform for studies on geodiversity and geoheritage, establishing an international hub for collaboration and raising awareness of their societal role. Focus areas includes:
• Methods and tools in geodiversity and geoheritage, such as assessments and mapping techniques.
• Geoconservation and geotourism management, with strategies for geoheritage site preservation and community involvement through citizen science projects.
• Geoheritage and education, highlighting experiences in innovative educational programs and the role of geoparks in disseminating geoscientific knowledge and increasing geoheritage awareness.
• The social and cultural links between geodiversity, geoheritage, and cultural identity.
• The interaction between geodiversity and biodiversity, emphasizing the role of abiotic components in ecosystem services.
The session is co-organised by the Geomorphosites Working Group of the International Association of Geomorphologists (IAG) and ProGEO, the International Association for the Conservation of Geological Heritage.

This session aims to bring together a diverse group of scientists who are interested in how life and planetary processes have co-evolved over geological time. This includes studies of how paleoenvironments have contributed to biological evolution and vice versa, linking fossil records to paleo-Earth processes and the influence of tectonic and magmatic processes on the evolution of life. As an inherently multi-disciplinary subject, we aspire to better understand the complex coupling of biogeochemical cycles and life, the links between mass extinctions and their causal geological events, how fossil records shed light on ecosystem drivers over deep time, and how tectono-geomorphic processes impact biodiversity patterns at global or local scales. We aim to understand our planet and its biosphere through both observation- and modelling-based studies. We also invite contributions on general exoplanet-life co-evolution.

This session is co-organized by COST Action CA23150 - pan-EUROpean BIoGeodynamics network (EUROBIG)

Landslide increasingly affect urban areas and transport infrastructure, due to rapid urbanization, climate change, and complex hydrogeological conditions. Anthropogenic activity associated with construction of housing, roads, and drainage systems modify surface water runoff and subsurface hydrology, strongly affecting slope stability [1]. Rapid urban development, especially in developing countries, results in unregulated buildings and poor or non-existing water drainage and water leakages, which cause in widespread slope instability under intense rainfall [2].
Landslide susceptibility maps based on statistical models may be ineffective at the urban scale. Physically based approaches may be suitable for including local anthropic changes and predicting slope stability in urban areas and along transportation routes [3]. They are specialized to landslide type, including reach distance and runoff, and take into account time-dependent triggering conditions [4, 5].
Numerical models can combine rain infiltration with measured rainfall, soil moisture and soil suction, local anthropic changes on the terrain, and may lead to effective early warning systems in urban areas [3, 6]. These considerations apply both to urban areas and transport routes, characterized by local and continued anthropic changes.
We invite contributions that explore:
(1) application of physically based models to landslides affecting urban areas and transport infrastructure, including but not limited to soil mechanics, hydrology, and geotechnical engineering;
(2) detection and monitoring of ground movements specialized for urban areas and transport routes, including the use of remote sensing technologies as well as ground-based techniques, and their integration with GIS and data analytics to provide real-time monitoring and early warning systems.
(3) effects of urban sprawl for slope stability, including interdisciplinary approaches, novel methodologies, and practical implementations in rapidly growing urban areas.
References
[1] Dille et al., Nature Geosci. (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41561-022-01073-3
[2] Ozturk et al., Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/d41586-022-02141-9
[3] Bozzolan et al., Sci. Tot. Env. (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.159412
[4] Alvioli et al., Eng. Geol. (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.enggeo.2021.106301
[5] Marchesini et al., Eng. Geol. (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.enggeo.2024.107474
[6] Mendes et al., Geotech. Geol. Eng. (2017). DOI: 10.1007/s10706-017-0303-z

To control catchment hydrology and morphology, and regulate water resources and forest and agricultural activities, channel control structures (such as check dams) and soil conservation techniques (e.g., terracing, mulching, afforestation) have been strategically used for several decades. Although research has underscored their vital role, several scientific aspects remain unexplored: i) suitable planning and design of restoration actions; ii) prediction of degradation and functioning over time; iii) quantification of the effectiveness of actions as a function of their desired purposes; iv) assessment of their effectiveness after extreme hydrological events. The lack of long-term monitoring studies makes this scientific objective complicated. However, remote sensing (RS) opens new horizons to monitor the evolution of catchment morphology and analyse past and current phenomena by exploiting multi-temporal surveys at different scales and open-source big data.
This session offers a platform for collaboration and discussion among soil scientists, hydrologists, geomorphologists, foresters and stakeholders, facilitating a dialogue on critical issues about planning, design, and management of torrent control works and soil conservation techniques at the catchment scale. Research about the following topics is welcome: i) innovative protocols and guidelines for planning and design; ii) emerging techniques for multi-temporal or real-time monitoring of effects exploiting RS; iii) standards for comprehensive analysis of structural and functioning conditions as well as impacts on natural dynamics of torrents and their catchments; iv) identification of new challenges (i.e., soil-bioengineering techniques and integration of living vegetation in check dam systems).
Early career scientists are encouraged to contribute to the session with original and advanced studies.

Mountain belts are characterized by the fastest rates of physical erosion and chemical weathering around the world, making them one of the best places to observe sediment production (e.g. erosion, weathering) and transport processes. In these settings, varied processes such as rockfall, debris flow, hillslope failure, glacial and periglacial erosion, fluvial erosion, transport and deposition, and chemical weathering operate, often simultaneously, over a wide range of temporal and spatial scales.

As a result, tracking the interactions between denudation, climatic forcing, tectonic activity, vegetation and land use is complex. However, these feedbacks affect both long- and short-term natural surface processes, landscape development, and human interactions with the environment. Many of these processes also pose serious threats to the biosphere, mountain settlements and infrastructure. Therefore, understanding and quantifying rates of erosion, weathering, and deposition within mountain landscapes is a challenging, but crucial research topic in Earth surface processes.

We welcome contributions that (1) investigate the processes of production, mobilisation, transport, and deposition of sediment in mountain landscapes, (2) explore feedbacks between erosion and weathering due to natural and anthropogenic forcings, and (3) consider how these processes contribute to natural hazards specific to mountain landscapes. We invite presentations that employ observational, analytical or modeling approaches in mountain environments across a variety of temporal and spatial scales. We particularly encourage early career scientists to apply for this session.

Landscapes are continuously shaped by tectonics and climate across geological timescales and into the present day. Sedimentary archives therefore offer a unique window providing narratives for how geomorphic systems adapt to external forcings. However, bridging the gap between modern and ancient observations is not straightforward due to preservation, buffering and shredding of environmental signals, requiring integration of both short- and long-term records scattered in landscapes and stratigraphy across time. This session aims integrate insights across timescales and methods to understand the sensitivity of modern and ancient landscapes to climatic and tectonic perturbations.

The Earth’s surface today is undergoing rapid change amidst increasing climate extremes worldwide, and recent advances in geoscience are making connections between geomorphic systems across time. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that in order to unlock projections of landscape change in the future, we must integrate our analysis from source to sink, using insights from modern short-term landscape dynamics to understand stratigraphy, and using long-term geologic approaches to unlock projections of landscape change in the present and future.

Our session will value research which uses quantitative techniques drawing on sedimentology, geomorphology, stratigraphy, geochemistry and modeling. This session will welcome a range of methods in source-to-sink analysis from modern and ancient systems to investigate the function of erosive, transport and depositional processes in inheriting, translating and preserving environmental information. The ultimate goal of this session is to improve our understanding of the dynamics of past, present, and future geomorphic systems in response to changes in tectonic and climatic boundary conditions.

Source-to-sink studies have always been of utmost importance in Geosciences. They investigate how and at what rate sediments travel from continental erosional to marine depositional environments. These studies aim to understand, quantify and monitor over time, the processes responsible for sediment formation, transport and burial and to highlight what creates a landscape and how it evolves through time. In this sense, submarine canyons and turbidite systems represent the most distal depocenter and can hence be considered the most important natural laboratory to study source-to-sink processes. However, few studies look for possible links existing between processes occurring on hinterland source area and in these deep-sea depositional sinks.
The aim of this session is to bring together researchers focusing on how time and processes of sediment erosion, transport and deposition can be constrained from land to the deep sea. We invite presentations that contribute to the advancement of our understanding of sediment dynamics occurring on land or in submarine canyons, with a particular interest in the time scales of sediment transfer and storage through the sedimentary systems and the processes regulating this time scale. Different approaches are welcomed, including but not limited to, in-situ measurements, remote sensing, sediment provenance (e.g., clays, petrography, elemental and isotopic geochemistry) and erosion, detrital geochronology, in modern or ancient sediments, with no limitation of timescale. Studies on smaller scale systems, such as lakes, are also welcomed as they can help to better constrain larger-scale processes. Early career scientists are particularly encouraged to propose abstracts.

Climate change is strongly impacting alpine regions, which are warming at rates twice as fast as the global average. Changes in precipitation patterns—such as increased rainfall intensity and decreased snowfall—are significantly affecting hydrological regimes and erosion and weathering processes. Shrinking glaciers and thawing permafrost, both driven by the rapid warming, are reshaping alpine landscapes by reducing ice cover, temporarily increasing meltwater runoff and destabilising mountain slopes. Extreme weather events and increased river runoff cause a higher frequency of debris flows, landslides, rockfalls, floods and cascading events. Understanding how sediment dynamics respond to rapid warming is key for predicting the evolution of alpine regions in the coming decades and is essential to adaptation and risk management.

This session focuses on how sediment dynamics in alpine catchments have responded to climate change over the past decades and how they are likely to evolve in the future. We would like to discuss sediment dynamics on various spatial scales, from hillslopes to catchments, addressing changes along alpine sediment cascades from source to sink. This includes quantitative analysis of sediment transport and yield influenced by climate warming on sediment supply, transport capacity and connectivity. We welcome contributions applying a broad range of methods ranging from modeling to experimental to field-based approaches.

This session addresses time periods including both historical climate change, as well as predictions for future climatic conditions, with timescales ranging from centuries to decades to short-duration events, such as intense precipitation events. We also invite contributions linking quantitative geomorphological knowledge to impacts and implications for climate change adaptation and sediment management in alpine environments.

Alluvial fan-river systems, which are ubiquitous at mountain fronts, are products of interactions among boulders, pebbles, grains, and the water carrying them. These cross-scale interactions among the granular materials and fluidic environment shape the macroscale self-organized and self-affined alluvial fan-river systems and control the dynamics and evolution of such systems. Theoretical reasoning, and measurements including high-resolution terrane mapping, geophysical probing, geochemical fingerprinting, state-of-art geochronology, and numerical and physical modeling, have been applied to unveil these interactions and quantify the relationship between fluxes, sizes and shapes, as well as the related constants and exponents of scaling laws. In this session, we invite contributions across these disciplines to foster our understanding of how the mechanics, physics, and chemistry at different scales regulate the alluvial fan-river system, which serves as an important habitat for species and reservoirs of nutrients and represents key sediment archives of nearby landscape evolution.

Clastic sediment is the product of surficial weathering and erosion, which break down existing source rocks into individual minerals and rock fragments. The textural, mineralogical, and chemical analysis of clastic sediment can therefore help in (a) the identification of source rocks in general and quantification of source rock contribution in particular and (b) the weathering and erosional regimes that prevailed during sediment generation. Accordingly, sedimentary archives around the world are used to reconstruct past Earth surface processes and conditions. However, the link between original source rock composition and resulting sediment composition is often obscured by transport and depositional processes (e.g. abrasion, mixing, dissolution). This session invites contributions that study source rock-sediment relationships using experimental and modeling approaches, as well as observations in natural systems across all spatial and temporal scales including deep time. Topics could include (but are not limited to), petrographic and textural studies on rocks and sediments, fingerprinting and multi-proxy provenance studies, and studies on (paleo-)weathering and (paleo-)sediment fluxes.

Water erosion is one of the most widespread forms of soil degradation and agricultural productivity loss as well as a substantial driver in landscape evolution and morphogenesis.
In the context of global change, the erosion process is expected to intensify its action, mainly because of an increase in the frequency of extreme precipitation and localized events.
Furthermore, the anthropic action in changing land uses and increasing erosive crops can contribute to the aggravation of the phenomenon.
In this session is expected to collect contributions for discussing over the files:
1. Soil erosion modelling, especially as part of scenario analysis in various contexts. Such an approach has exponentially grown in the last decades becoming a current tool for exploring new horizons in erosion prediction.
It may include new data processing methodologies with local and global approaches to improve understanding of long-term behaviors and determine possible trajectories due to the impact of erosion factors such as climate and land-use change.
2. Erosion modelling and assessment based on alternative data such as remote and proximal sensing, fingerprinting of sediment sources, benchmarking, etc., over a wide range of scales and methods.
This is in response to the increased availability of observational data, especially from satellite, allowing detailed monitoring of the processes.

Knowledge of the global distribution and character of soils is fundamental to our ability to effectively manage land resources and to interpret them as proxy archives in the evolution of landscapes. Such knowledge is obtained through systematic study of the spatiotemporal relationships of soils across the landscape and the mechanisms or processes responsible for their development. This session is dedicated to the advancement in our knowledge or understanding of emerging concepts in the fields of pedology, paleopedology, and/or soil geography. We welcome contributions from any geographic region, method of study, and conceptual approach. We particularly encourage submissions from ECS dedicated to fostering continued research in these fields.

The long-standing scientific debate on whether human-derived land use change (i.e., deforestation, opening new agricultural areas, mining activities, urbanization, etc.) or climate change, which plays a pivotal role in causing soil erosion, regulating water resources, and altering hydrological cycles in Southern Hemisphere remains unresolved in the existing literature.
This session, therefore, will examine the interconnected impacts of land use practices and climate change on soil erosion and water conservation in various landscapes in the Southern Hemisphere. It will focus on the distinct difficulties and prospects for sustainable environmental management on the regional or catchment scale. We encourage research contributions on the topics - but not solely limited to - listed below discussing their impacts on soil erosion and water conservation:
• Impacts of agricultural expansion
• Evaluation of soil conservation strategies in agroecosystems considering climate change
• Deforestation and its potential rebounds
• Aspects potential impacts of mining activities
• New techniques, methods, and strategies of remote sensing, modeling, and monitoring for mitigation strategies.
By addressing the intricate interactions of processes mentioned above, this session welcomes to a broader extent scientists, particularly early career scientists with their novel studies.

Sedimentary archives can be found across diverse environments worldwide, allowing investigation and disentanglement of past environmental processes over different setting. However, one key limitation in the investigation of such records is deciphering the complexity of how the different forcings acting in a natural system are manifested in the environment and consequently propagated into the studied archives. Interpretations derived from any sedimentary archive thus depend on a our understanding of the surrounding natural system itself and its web of feedbacks, the investigated sedimentary record, and the utilized proxies. Such interpretations often call for the integration of different disciplines, the development of new tools for sampling, novel laboratory methodologies and modelling.

For this session we welcome any contribution that integrates sedimentological, geochemical, biological, and geochronological methods, as well as modelling approaches, novel laboratory experiments and monitoring, for the interpretation of sedimentary systems, with a special focus on mechanism-oriented interpretation. Contributions that either focus on the development and calibration of novel proxies, analytical approaches (either destructive or non-destructive) and data analysis (statistics, machine learning, AI), or present interesting case studies, are welcome as well.

This session asks for well-dated geoarchives that document the physical stratal evidence of the transition from Late Holocene to Anthropocene conditions: such as artificial deposits, lake, estuary or marine sediments, peat, speleothems, ice core or biological hosts such as trees or corals. The evidence for transition to the Anthropocene may include various marker signals such as changes in the types and abundance of physical materials or biota or distinct geochemical signals; ideally providing multiple proxies and/or using innovative techniques. We are interested in continuous to near-continuous records that nevertheless can extend hundreds or even thousands of years back in time, while including comparable analysis through the mid-20th century to near the present day. Presentations should focus on how, if at all, the Anthropocene can be distinguished in these archives. Studies from any continent will be considered, though presentations on archives from the Global South are especially encouraged. This session is also part of UNESCO IGCP 732 LANGUAGE of the Anthropocene.

The Planetary Geomorphology session aims to bring together geomorphologists who study the Earth with those who work on other bodies such as Mars, Venus, Mercury, the Moon, icy satellites of the outer solar system, comets, and/or asteroids. Studies applicable to landscapes on any scale on any solid body are welcome. We particularly encourage those who use Earth analogues, laboratory/numerical simulation and/or big satellite datasets to submit their work. Considered processes could include aeolian, volcanic, tectonic, fluvial, glacial, periglacial, or "undetermined" ones. We especially welcome contributions from early-career scientists and geomorphologists who are new to planetary science.

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.

Aeolian processes act on planetary surfaces throughout the Solar System, yielding similar landforms and patterns across a wide range of spatial scales despite differences in atmospheric and surface properties. They are typically associated with the movement of sediments driven by an atmospheric flow but can also be controlled by other modes of matter transport such as ice sublimation. The combination of terrestrial and extra-terrestrial experiments and observations, as well as analogue studies, provides the opportunities as well as challenges for improving our fundamental theories and numerical models for better understanding of these aeolian environments. Innovations in instrumentation and experimental techniques continue to yield novel insights on Earth, while space missions and remote probes constantly deliver new and surprising evidence from aeolian environments on other planetary bodies. This session welcomes research on all aspects of aeolian processes and landforms on planetary surfaces, employing a variety of techniques, including, but not limited to, short- and long-term field experiments, laboratory experiments, numerical simulations, and remote sensing of aeolian landform features.

This session explores cold-climate aeolian processes, landforms, and deposits, such as sand dunes and loess, with a focus on their roles in landscape dynamics and evolution. We welcome abstracts covering research on wind-driven sediment production, transport, and accumulation, as well as landform and bedform development in the Arctic and high-latitude regions, along with the environmental and climate history such processes, landforms and deposits reveal. Contributions using diverse methods, including dating, remote sensing, and stratigraphic analysis, are especially encouraged. The session aims to address the impacts of climate change on these landscapes and their evolution over time. Key topics include aeolian processes, landscape evolution, and the interaction between wind, climatic conditions, and sediment in shaping cold-climate environments.

The interactions between aerosols, climate, weather, and society are among the large uncertainties of current atmospheric research. Mineral dust is an important natural source of aerosol with significant implications on radiation, cloud microphysics, atmospheric chemistry, and the carbon cycle via the fertilization of marine and terrestrial ecosystems. Together with other light-absorbing particles, dust impacts snow and ice albedo and can accelerate glacier melt. In addition, properties of dust deposited in sediments and ice cores are important (paleo-)climate indicators.

This interdivisional session -- building bridges between the EGU divisions AS, CL, CR, SSP, BG and GM -- had its first edition in 2004 and it is open to contributions dealing with:

(1) measurements of all aspects of the dust cycle (emission, transport, deposition, size distribution, particle characteristics) with in situ and remote sensing techniques,
(2) numerical simulations of dust on global, regional, and local scales,
(3) meteorological conditions for dust storms, dust transport and deposition,
(4) interactions of dust with clouds and radiation,
(5) influence of dust on atmospheric chemistry,
(6) fertilization of ecosystems through dust deposition,
(7) interactions with the cryosphere, including also aerosols other than dust,
(8) any study using dust as a (paleo-)climate indicator, including sediment archives in loess, ice cores, lake sediments, ocean sediments and dunes,
(9) impacts of dust on climate and climate change, and associated feedbacks and uncertainties,
(10) implications of dust for health, transport, energy systems, agriculture, infrastructure, etc.

We especially encourage the submission of papers that integrate different disciplines and/or address the modelling of past, present, and future climates.

Water resources are a strategic issue in drylands globally as these environments are by definition water-limited, making them highly sensitive to changes in regional water balances and vulnerable to extreme events such as droughts and floods. Drylands face challenges from changing hydrological conditions and landscapes, driven by climatic and anthropogenic factors, affecting freshwater availability and quality. However, many aspects of the functioning of these systems are poorly understood or often treated in a disciplinary manner. Yet, interdisciplinary research is essential to improve the understanding of hydroclimatic processes in these regions and the human impacts on water resources, to achieve sustainable development goals. We welcome submissions focusing on processes in dryland research across a broad geographical range, from Mediterranean drylands to hyperarid deserts, to build an interdisciplinary session including topics such as:
Estimation of the spatiotemporal variability of water fluxes: rainfall, soil moisture, evapotranspiration, floods and droughts
Hydro-geomorphological impacts of extreme events
Transport and deposition of river sediments and their impact on channel morphology
Groundwater recharge process estimation
Quantification of the impacts of anthropogenic water abstraction?
Climate dynamics and their influence on dryland water balance including paleo-reconstructions and projected future scenarios
Transmission losses and intermittent stream functioning

This session welcomes all studies on Mars science and exploration. With many active missions, Mars research is as active as ever, and new data come in on a daily basis. The aim of this session is to bring together disciplines as various as geology, geomorphology, geophysics, and atmospheric science. We look forward to receiving contributions covering both past and present processes, either pure Mars science or comparative planetology (including fieldwork on terrestrial analogues), as well as modeling approaches and laboratory experiments (or any combination of those). New results on Mars science obtained from recent in situ and orbital measurements are particularly encouraged, as well as studies related to upcoming missions and campaigns (ExoMars, Mars Sample Return).

The icy moons of our Solar System are prime targets for the search for extraterrestrial life. Moons such as Saturn's Enceladus and Jupiter's Europa are considered potential habitats because of their subglacial water oceans, which are in direct contact with the rocks below. Titan, with its potential subsurface ocean, icy surface and methane-based weather, could provide an analogue for a primordial earth and the circumstances in which life developed. To assess the habitability and sample the oceans of these moons, several approaches are being discussed, including water plume surveys on Europa and Enceladus, as well as developing key technologies to penetrate the ice and even study the ocean itself with autonomous underwater vehicles, if the ice is thin enough. Moreover, a key aspect of habitability is linked with the geological processes acting on these moons. The main questions that this session aims to address are the following:
- What can we learn from analogue studies on Earth?
- What are the properties of the ice shell and how do they evolve?
- How will planned missions to these bodies contribute to furthering our understanding?
- What measurements should be conducted by future missions?

The goal of this multidisciplinary session is to bring together scientists from different fields, including planetary sciences and the cryosphere community, to discuss the current status and next steps in the remote and in-situ exploration of the icy moons of our solar system. We welcome contributions from analogue studies, on the results of current and past missions, planned missions, mission concepts, lessons learned from other missions, and more. Contributions bridging the cryosphere-icy moons communities are of particular interest to this session.

The coupling between tectonics, climate and surface processes governs the dynamics of mountain belts and basins. However, the amplitude of these couplings and their impact on mountain building are not well understood. Quantitative constraints are therefore needed to quantify these interactions. They can be provided by geomorphic and sedimentary records including longitudinal river profiles, fluvial and marine terraces, landslides, downstream fining trends, growth strata, sediment provenance, sequence stratigraphy, and changing depositional environments. In addition, such interactions may be explored by geodetic analyses (e.g., GPS, UAV and satellite images analyses) as well as with innovative geo-informatic approaches. Indeed, the increasing integration of geochronological methods for quantifying erosion rates and source-to-sink sediment transfer with landscape evolution, stratigraphic, climatic, and tectonic models allows us to advance our understanding of the interactions between surface processes, climate and tectonic deformation.
We invite contributions that use geomorphic, geochronologic and/or sedimentary records to understand tectonic deformation, climate histories, and surface processes, and welcome studies that address their interactions and couplings at a range of spatial and temporal scales. We invite contributions that address the role of surface processes in modulating rates of deformation and tectonic style, or of tectonics modulating the response of landscapes to climate change. We encourage coupled catchment-basin studies that take advantage of numerical/physical modelling, geochemical tools for quantifying rates of surface processes (cosmogenic nuclides, low-temperature thermochronology, luminescence dating) and high resolution digital topographic and subsurface data.

The complex interactions between tectonic, geodynamic, climate, and earth surface processes that occur above subduction zones drive changes in mountain building, ocean and atmospheric circulation, the flux and dispersal of sediment, water, and nutrients, and biological evolution. Understanding these processes, their feedbacks, and their effects on the Earth system requires studying ideal experiments playing out on our planet. For example, the Italian Peninsula is a geodynamic menagerie with active and inactive subduction segments, slab windows, and portions of the crust with variable states of stress and expressions of strain, and it is also a biodiversity hotspot. Such interesting regions offer unique opportunities to improve understanding of mountain-building processes and their influence on geomorphic and biological systems. For example, faulting and uplift influence not only mountain relief, river channel steepness, and drainage reorganization, but also the connectivity of ecological domains. Understanding how these processes are linked can create a deeper understanding of the past and present geodynamics and how solid earth processes facilitate landscape and biological evolution.

We particularly welcome studies of process connections between biological evolution and landscape evolution in the Italian Peninsula and other interesting regions. These areas are veritable playgrounds for researchers interested in the interrelationships among tectonics, climate, geomorphology, and biodiversity. We invite contributions linking quantitative techniques (e.g., cosmogenic nuclides and thermochronometry, environmental DNA metabarcoding, topographic analysis, landscape evolution modeling) to field interpretations to test geological and biogeographical hypotheses.

The links between crustal deformation, mantle dynamics, and climate-driven surface processes have long been recognized as main drivers for the evolution of orogens and sedimentary basins. Yet, the feedback mechanisms between erosion, sediment transportation and deposition, crustal tectonics and mantle dynamics, including magmatism, remain elusive. Understanding the complex interplay between tectonic and surface processes requires an interdisciplinary approach. Quantifying the uplift and erosion rates in orogens and subsidence and sedimentation rates in basins, and separating distinct crustal, deep mantle, and climatic forcings are among the most challenging objectives, because they all act on a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. Understanding such a dynamic system requires observational data from field studies, geophysical and well data analysis, thermochronological studies as well as analogue and numerical modelling techniques.
We invite contributions investigating orogenesis and sedimentary basin evolution and their connection to (climate-driven) surface processes, and crustal and mantle dynamics. We encourage contributions using multi-disciplinary and innovative methods addressing the coupling between tectonics and surface processes.

Earth's landscape evolution is shaped by the dynamic interplay between tectonics, climate, and surface processes, with added complexity due to contrasting lithospheric structures in cratonic and orogenic settings. Moreover, the physicochemical properties of the basement rocks and their cooling/exhumation histories are deeply affected by fault activity, hydrothermal alteration, and long-term exposure to superficial conditions.
Thermochronology is essential for paleogeographic reconstructions, as it allows quantifying cooling, exhumation, and weathering patterns in distinct geodynamic and physiographic settings. Recent developments in thermochronology, including 40Ar/39Ar, fission tracks, Raman dating, (U-Th)/He, 4He/3He, trapped charge systems, as well as complementary isotopic methods like K-Ar dating of clay weathering products and U-Pb carbonate dating, provide a comprehensive toolset to study the journey of rocks from deep crustal levels to the surface, and their remobilization in source-to-sink systems. Computational tools and remote sensing methods further contribute to this interdisciplinary approach. While integrating such methods enables the development of robust tectonic and landscape evolution models, these technical advancements also underscore the existing limitations in our holistic understanding of the Earth systems and their interaction.
We invite contributions that: (1) present theoretical and experimental work on the development of new thermochronometric systems and modeling approaches, or improve our understanding of the capabilities and limitations of current methods for reliable geological interpretations; and (2) address deep-time evolution of rocks to elucidate the timing and rates of processes shaping the Earth's surface using interdisciplinary approaches involving geothermochronology, geomorphology, tectonics, geochemistry, and mineralogy.

Geologic processes are generally too slow, too rare, or too deep to be observed in-situ and to be monitored with a resolution high enough to understand their dynamics. Analogue experiments and numerical simulation have thus become an integral part of the Earth explorer's toolbox to select, formulate, and test hypotheses on the origin and evolution of geological phenomena.

To foster synergy between the rather independently evolving experimentalists and modellers 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, landslides and volcanic eruptions to sedimentary processes, plate tectonics and landscape evolution. We especially welcome those presentations that discuss model strengths and weaknesses, challenge the existing limits, or compare/combine the different modelling techniques to realistically simulate and better understand the Earth's behaviour.

A crucial aspect of seismotectonic studies is accurately identifying active faults and reconstructing their geometry, kinematics, and deformation rates using geological, seismological, and geodetic data to the fullest extent possible within the current deformation field. This task is challenging, often complicated by the scarcity of clear evidence or quantitative data, both at the near-surface and at seismogenic depths. Developing a reliable seismotectonic model is, therefore, subject to uncertainties stemming from data limitations and errors, which can hinder the precise characterization of fault geometry, kinematics, and associated stress and deformation fields.
To overcome these challenges, it has become essential to integrate various methodologies both cutting-edge in their technologies and complementary in their resolution scales, depth, and dimensions (from 3D to 4D). The multidisciplinary nature of seismotectonics, which synthesises structural-geological, morphological, seismological, geophysical, remote-sensing, and geodetic data alongside numerical and analogue modelling, offers a comprehensive approach to identifying active tectonic signals. Additionally, the increasing availability of big data and the application of deep learning techniques in geosciences present a unique opportunity to bridge data gaps and improve the accuracy and reliability of seismotectonic models.
This session invites studies focused on the following themes: i) field-based geological and structural surveys of active faults, including those in volcanic regions; ii) classical and innovative multiscale and multidisciplinary approaches in geology, seismology, and geophysics; iii) the development and analysis of new or updated seismological, geophysical, and field- or remotely-collected datasets; iv) fault imaging, tectonic setting definitions, and the creation of 3D seismotectonic models; v) numerical and analogue modelling; vi) studies that explore the alignment or discrepancies between known fault characteristics, seismotectonic models, and seismic events; vii) novel insights aimed at advancing seismotectonic modelling.
Our goal is to stimulate significant scientific interest and debate on advancing our understanding of active faulting, aiming to produce robust seismotectonic models. We particularly encourage submissions that combine classical and innovative methodologies, including big data, deep learning, and other forms of artificial intelligence.

The Eastern Mediterranean is an actively deforming region where three major tectonic plates interact: the African, the Arabian and the Eurasian plates. The Cainozoic geodynamic framework of the Eastern Mediterranean region consists of subduction, collision, strike-slip kinematics, extrusion of crustal blocks and slab deformation.

This session focuses on three aspects of the Eastern Mediterranean geodynamics:
(1) Which geodynamic mechanisms define the key active structures and how do they operate?
(2) How is surface deformation being accommodated over a range of temporal and spatial scales? How individual earthquakes accrue on faults to account for their long-term kinematics? Which is the impact of deep-seated processes on surface deformation?
(3) How did the geodynamic evolution through the Cainozoic lead to present day tectonic deformation?

We welcome contributions from a wide range of disciplines including, but not limited to, neotectonics, seismology, tectonic geodesy (e.g. GNSS, InSAR), paleoseismology, tectonic geomorphology, remote sensing, structural geology, and geodynamic modeling.

We strongly encourage the contribution of early career researchers.

Vertical motions of the Earth’s lithosphere away from an isostatically compensated state provide a powerful lens into the dynamic behavior of the sublithospheric mantle. These motions can now be monitored geodetically at unprecedented precision. At the same time, geological records provide invaluable spatial-temporal information about the history of vertical lithosphere motion, for instance through provenance, stratigraphic and other proxies. Altogether, the combination of geodetic and geologic observations provide extraordinary opportunities to constrain deep earth processes in geodynamic forward and inverse models of past mantle convection. The challenges of using Earth's surface records to better understand deep Earth processes involve (1) signal separation from other uplift and subsidence mechanisms, such as isostasy and plate tectonics, and (2) different spatial resolutions and scales between models and observables.

In this session, we aim to bring together researchers interested in the surface expression of deep Earth processes from geodetic to geological time scales using multi-disciplinary methods, including (but not limited to) geodetic, geophysical, geochemical, geomorphological, stratigraphic, and other observations, as well as numerical modeling. We welcome studies that tackle challenges and address questions surrounding mantle convection and its surface manifestation in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic times. Studies using a multidisciplinary approach are particularly encouraged.

Underwater landscapes, from shallow coastal zones to deep oceans, are shaped by geologic, biologic, oceanographic and anthropogenic processes. The resulting morphologies are manifold and their description and quantification provide critical insights into associated underlying processes. Many such processes act at multiple spatial and temporal scales, and their understanding is key for a safe and sustainable use of coastal regions and the assessment of offshore geohazards. This interdisciplinary session aims to examine the causes and consequences of processes shaping underwater landscapes, including erosional and depositional dynamics, gravitational driven and current-induced sediment transport, submarine landslides, active deformation, volcanic activity, fluid migration and escape, faulting and folding, and other processes responsible of seafloor geomorphic changes. Contributions to this session can include work from marine or lacustrine environments and all physiographic regions such as coastal oceans and marginal seas, oceanic plateaus, abyssal hills, mid-ocean ridges, accretionary wedges, continental shelves and margins. We welcome integrative studies that combine satellite-derived and hydroacoustic seabed characterizations, visual observations, seismic images of the sub-seafloor as well as sedimentary, geochemical, and geological seabed samples. Such interdisciplinary studies provide an exciting opportunity to integrate the approaches of geomorphology and geophysics, and to extend quantitative geomorphology offshore.

Nature-based coastal solutions (NBCS) are gaining increasing traction by coastal scientists, managers and engineers as the way forward for managing vulnerable coastal environments. While there is evidence of NBCS – living shorelines, mangrove, saltmarsh and dune restoration, and artificial reefs – being successful in stabilising shorelines and coastal zones, enhancing habitat structures and biodiversity, facilitating carbon sequestration, improving water quality, and reducing flooding and erosion risk, there is limited to no evidence of the effectiveness of NBCS over the long-term. Herein, the long-term is defined as multi-decadal timescales, the timescales of concern for decision-making policies and strategies aimed at sustainable coastal zone management. The uncertainty regarding the long-term effectiveness of NBCS is further fuelled by the uncertainty on the spatial and temporal scales over which coastal systems respond to natural and human forcings. With NBCS being actively pushed for coastal management globally, we need to understand its long-term effectiveness and implications for coastal environments and the cultures, societies and economies that are explicitly linked to these environments. This requires evidence of NBCS successes and failures across spatio-temporal scales, with critical insights on potential uncertainties regarding its long-term impacts on coastal landscapes and socioeconomics in a future local, regional, and global environment.

We, therefore, welcome contributions that provide: (a) case study examples on the successes and failures of NBCS over various spatio-temporal scales across variations in coastal geomorphology, (b) critical insights on the future long-term implications of NBCS for coastal geomorphology and associated socioeconomics, and (c) methodological innovations (e.g., numerical modelling, systems dynamics mapping, smart technology, etc.) for assessing the long-term efficacy of NBCS.

Understanding the natural and physical processes that govern river deltas, estuaries, and coastal environments is crucial for developing effective management and climate adaptation strategies. Both anthropogenic activities and climate change exert significant influence over these processes, altering them across various temporal and spatial scales. To ensure long-term sustainability of these landscapes, it is essential to understand how these evolving processes interact at the system-wide level.
Managing these environments is challenging due to the complex feedback between physical, biological, biogeochemical, and human-driven processes, all of which drive morphodynamic adjustments to natural and anthropogenic changes in relative mean sea level, sediment supply rates, and hydrodynamic forces such as waves and tides. Quantifying these ongoing changes and predicting future shifts is crucial not only for advancing our understanding of how these systems function but also for enabling effective climate adaptation planning, including the implementation of nature-based solutions.

This session aims to promote the necessary collaborative, cross-disciplinary efforts by bringing together a wide range of scientific communities focused on the study of fluvial, tidal estuarine, and coastal landscapes. This includes, but is not limited to, research on hydrodynamics, hydrology, sediment properties and dynamics, geomorphology, bio-morphodynamics, ecology, biogeochemistry, the impacts of climate change and global sea-level rise, and their implications for management and restoration. We particularly encourage contributions from those engaged in inter- and trans-disciplinary projects within the coastal zone, working at the intersection of different scientific fields, as well as those operating at the interface of science and policy.
We invite presenters to share recent scientific advancements in understanding the fluvial-to-marine transition zone through innovative theories, field studies, data-driven approaches, remote sensing analyses, geological reconstructions, laboratory experiments, and numerical modeling, applied to coastal environments on Earth and potentially on other planets. Additionally, we welcome studies focused on the adaptation, restoration, and management of coastal environments in response to projected climate changes.

Extreme waves pose a significant threat to coastal areas and the communities residing there, with potentially devastating global impacts. This session will explore extreme wave phenomena, focusing on two of the most relevant: tsunamis, high-energy seismic waves generated by underwater earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, or landslides, and medicanes (Mediterranean Hurricanes), tropical-like cyclones forming in the Mediterranean, increasingly frequent and intense due to climate change. Through the analysis of recent scientific studies, predictive models, remote sensing data, and case studies of past events, speakers will provide an overview of the formation mechanisms of these phenomena, monitoring methodologies, and risk mitigation strategies for coastal populations. Furthermore, artificial intelligence and deep learning methods may represent an important topic to address for coastal monitoring. A combined use of these techniques allows obtaining an exhaustive framework for the geomorphological evidence related to extreme waves. The session will also cover the impact of extreme waves on marine ecosystems and infrastructure. The goal is to promote greater awareness and resilience in the face of extreme events within the context of ongoing climate and geological changes.

Analysing the morphodynamics of sandy coasts, from the nearshore to inland dune systems, is essential for understanding their behaviour over both short and long timescales. Given the vast spatial and temporal ranges involved, studying the resulting landforms is both challenging and intricate. However, methodological advancements in coastal sciences continue pushing the boundaries of coastal research and allows sandy coastlines to be examined across various time and space scales. This approach helps link processes with landform responses.

Coastal dunes act as a physical barrier against flooding during high-energy storms, while beaches and nearshore areas mitigate storm impacts through dynamic interactions involving sediment transfers and rapid morphological changes. Investigating the complex interactions between these three interconnected systems is critical for understanding and managing coastal environments.

This session invites contributions from coastal scientists focused on measuring and modelling physical processes and responses within these three sub-units across different spatial and temporal scales. It will showcase the latest scientific advancements in our understanding of coastal environments and promote knowledge exchange between the submerged zone (e.g., nearshore waves, currents, and sediment transport) and sub-aerial zones (e.g., beach and aeolian dune dynamics).

The session is sponsored by the Commission on Coastal Systems (CCS) of the International Geographical Union (www.igu-ccs.org) and the IGCP Project 725 ‘Forecasting Coastal Change’ (https://www.sfu.ca/igcp-725.html). A solicited speaker will be announced shortly.

The phenomenon of “fluid venting” is globally recognized across various geodynamic contexts, leading to diverse surface morphologies such as pockmarks and mud volcanoes, as well as a range of geological, geochemical, and biological phenomena. Fluid venting involves the upward migration of fluids (including gas) due to subsurface overpressure and/or buoyancy through plumbing systems that are not yet fully understood. Sedimentary layers and geological structures (faults, fractures) can either facilitate or block fluid migration. Fluid seepage in shallow subsurface, increasing pore pressure in sediments, modifies the slope stability leading to landslides and, mutually, the presence of mass-transport deposits influences the location and morphology of fluid venting features.
Two main types of fluid vents are commonly distinguished: (i) “cold seeps,” which are characterized by low-temperature fluid emissions, and (ii) hydrothermal vents, where fluids emerge at temperatures between 200-400°C. In submarine settings, marine geophysical data of different bandwidths can be used to identify fluid-related features on the seafloor and the presence of gas in the water column, which appears as acoustic flares, and below the seafloor, as acoustic anomalies. These anomalies include focused or diffused acoustic turbidity and blanking, bright spots, high-amplitude reflections, chimney or pipe structures, and bottom simulating reflectors (BSRs) associated with gas hydrate.
Sampling and direct observation are also essential for assessing the chemosynthetic ecosystems thriving in these extreme environmental conditions. This session aims to explore the role of submarine fluid flow and venting in: (i) shaping the seafloor as a geomorphic process, (ii) driving other geological processes (i.e. slope instability) (iii) posing potential marine geohazards, and (iv) driving biological processes. Contributions are invited from any offshore region, ranging from continental shelves to abyssal plains, based on multi-scale datasets including hydro-acoustic imagery, 2D/3D seismic reflection data, samples, and ROV observations.

Assessing the multi-temporal coastal evolution in different morpho-dynamic contexts is a challenge of high scientific value in climate change studies. Considering that global sea level will rise over the next millennia with a magnitude depending on the warming level, it is fundamental to foresee the effects on the coastal areas around the world.
In this context, examining past climate changes is essential for generating possible future scenarios and determining the extent of human influence on these shifts up to the present-day. Although millennial changes in coastal landscapes were primarily driven by relative sea-level variations resulting from global, regional, and local forces (i.e. tectonics, isostasy, volcanism), and surface processes (i.e. erosion, transport, and sedimentation), human activity also played a significant role in shaping these changes.
Consequently, the collection of paleo-sea level and paleo-environmental records is crucial to shed new light on the impacts of past climate changes on modern populations and the effects of surface processes at the social level. These results can also be supported by the ongoing technological progresses that allow marine scientists to collect large volumes of data and the fast development of new Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning tools applied to data analysis.
This session that comes for the collaboration between INQUA-ONSEA project and Coastal Geoarchaeology IAG – Working group wants to face these very topical issues by welcoming contributions on recent advancements on Quaternary coastal paleo-landscape reconstructions from the onshore to the offshore, as well as studies on regional and local coastal modification that followed relative sea-level changes or extreme events in historical and recent times. The main topics are:
• From field data to modelling approaches for paleo-landscape reconstruction;
• Past to future Sea-level changes and coastal responses;
• New technologies and AI in marine and coastal studies;
• Response of past and modern urbanized coastal sectors against quick to sudden sea-flooding by extreme wave events (e.g. tsunamis, tropical cyclones, etc.)
• New perspectives for Geoarchaeological studies of coastal areas;
• Recent and past climatic influence on coastal modification;
• Analyzing coastal landscapes from backshore to offshore.

The coastal ocean and especially in marginal seas are of great importance to human society as places of natural resources that need to be preserved for long term sustainability. They are dynamic environments that are subject to rapid change whether that is caused by natural climatic and related sea level processes or more recently as result of anthropogenic impact on the coastal zone. Understanding how sediment and carbon move through the coastal zone in river mouths, as well as along the coast and across the continental shelf is important if we are to manage these areas efficiently in the future. Can sediment be captured in the coastal zone and help to defend against future sea level rise? Carbon may be potentially sequestered or lost in these areas in coastal lagoons, deltas or in shelf clinoforms.
In addition to sediment transport, habitat mapping plays a crucial role in coastal management. Mapping benthic habitats, marine biodiversity, and geomorphological features is essential for developing strategies to mitigate environmental stressors, such as pollution or habitat degradation, and for understanding how these areas contribute to carbon storage. This information supports sustainable management practices and informs restoration efforts aimed at protecting biodiversity hotspots.
We encourage submissions from all working in shallow water environments and especially in marginal seas. Studies of modern systems as well as Quaternary examples can help us understand what controls the transport and recycling of sediments and carbon. These studies need to integrate both modern and recent observations as well as reconciling these with numerical models to improve our predictions of coastal evolution in the future. Combining vast datasets from remote sensing, habitat mapping, geophysical surveys, and in situ monitoring, with advanced analytics and numerical models, provides a holistic view of coastal evolution.

Global coastal zones are of high ecological and societal values. As the dynamic interface between land, sea, and air, they are heavily impacted by a combination of climate-driven environmental change and human interventions. Approaches to sustainably manage the coastal zone increasingly seek to provide co-benefits of risk mitigation, climate regulation, preserving biodiversity, and supporting coastal community resilience. These require scientific evidence and discourse that integrates across disciplines.

This session invites multi- and inter-disciplinary contributions focusing on coastal processes, their dynamic interactions, and their role in exchanges across coastal interfaces (e.g. land-sea, air-sea, …) under a changing climate and changing human activities. We welcome observational, modelling and theoretical studies reporting on processes linked to coastal hydrodynamics, coastal biogeochemistry, coastal ecology, or coastal sediment dynamics and geomorphology. Studies may span the wide range of spatial and temporal scales characteristic of existing and projected change in coastal seascapes and landscapes from the inner shelf shoreward to beaches and dunes, estuaries, intertidal flats, saltmarshes and coastal wetlands. We encourage the submission of holistic Earth system studies that explore the role of the coastal zone for coastal seas’ dynamics including exchanges across coastal interfaces (e.g. land-sea, air-sea, …) under the impact of climate change and human activities. We also encourage studies that focus on impacts of coastal management approaches on coastal processes and dynamics, spanning engineered, hybrid, and nature-based options related to changing activities such as coastal protection, tourism, shipping, fisheries and aquaculture, and the expansion of renewable energies and other coastal infrastructure.

Mountain glaciers serve as crucial indicators of both past and present climate changes, making them essential to the study of mountainous regions. They play a significant role in water resource management, supporting human populations, agriculture, hydropower, and ecosystems, and also contribute to sea-level changes. The complexity of the interactions between glaciers, topography, and climate, however, poses challenges for making correlations on regional and hemispherical scales. This complexity is compounded by the increasing specialisation within the scientific community, where research often focuses on specific aspects or selected mountain regions.
The primary aim of this session is to bridge these gaps by stimulating discussion and promoting integrated research efforts on mountain glaciers. We invite contributions on various aspects of mountain glaciers and glaciations, such as (a) glacial landforms and glacier reconstructions, (b) dating techniques and glacier chronologies, (c) glaciology and palaeoclimatic interpretations, and (d) impacts on ecosystems and human societies. We especially encourage studies that address regional and hemispheric connections, issues, and advances.
The temporal scope of the session will cover Early Pleistocene glaciations through to the Last Glacial Maximum, and Holocene/modern glaciers. This session aims to foster ongoing collaborative research on mountain glaciations, providing a platform for the exchange of ideas and expertise among researchers from diverse locations and methodological backgrounds.

The glacial sedimentary record, and the geomorphological features associated with it, are rightfully often seen through the prism of the modern day processes at work on Earth. Yet the issue of representativeness is a major factor in the correct interpretation of the sedimentary record. Which factors conspire to a glacial record dominated by steep-sided fjordal palaeovalleys, and which factors promote extensive till(ite) sheet deposits? In this session, through both talks and posters, we will explore through new contributions and perspectives the red thread that unites all glacial records. We warmly welcome workers on modern and ancient glacial records alike for a fruitful exchange.

Present-day glacial and periglacial processes in cold regions, i.e. arctic and alpine environments, provide modern analogues to processes and climatic changes that took place during the Pleistocene, including gradual retreat or collapse of ice sheets and mountain glaciers, and thawing and shrinking of low-land permafrost. Current geomorphological and glaciological changes in mid-latitude mountain ranges could also serve as a proxy for future changes in high-latitude regions within a context of climate change. Examples are speed-up or disintegration of creeping permafrost features or the relictification of rock glaciers.

For our session we invite contributions that either:
1. investigate present-day glacial and/or periglacial landforms, sediments and processes to describe the current state, to reconstruct past environmental conditions and to predict future scenarios in cold regions; or
2. have a Quaternary focus and aim at enhancing our understanding of past glacial, periglacial and paraglacial processes, also through the application of dating techniques.

Case studies that use a multi-disciplinary approach (e.g. field, laboratory and modelling techniques) and/or that highlight the interaction between the glacial, periglacial and paraglacial cryospheric components in cold regions are particularly welcome.

Glaciers cover roughly 10 percent of the Earth’s surface and help shape landscapes and relief in high latitude regions and many mountain ranges. Subglacial processes, such as sliding, create material that shapes the landscape. Paraglacial processes also have a strong impact on the glacial landscape evolution. Debris that falls upon the ice, or is entrained it in, is advected down glacier to where it melts out, creating moraines. Existing sediment below the glacier can be mobilized by pressurized subglacial water and is then transported in proglacial rivers or deposited in lakes or fjords. The role and importance of these processes will evolve as glacier dynamics change and hydrology in glacierized catchments responds to climate change.
This session aims at gathering contributions that use modeling, laboratory, field observations and archives or remote sensing methods, or a combination thereof, to evaluate these processes. We welcome submissions that address these processes across a wide range of timescales, from sub-daily to multi-millennial, including those focused on these dynamics during past climate variations. Additionally, we are interested in research contributions focused on diverse glaciated environments from small alpine glaciers to ice sheets. Research that addresses the changes that occur as climate warms and how these processes interact with other aspects of the Earth system, including glacier dynamics, is of particular interest for this session.

Rock glaciers are characteristic landforms associated with mountainous periglacial landscapes and generated by gravity-driven creep of (ice-rich) frozen ground (permafrost). Their location, characteristics and evolution are controlled by a combination of environmental (e.g. internal structure, topography, lithology, debris loading) and climate-dependent factors (e.g. thermal and hydrological regimes). Rock glaciers are highly relevant in various fields of research, such as geomorphology, hydrology, geohazards, paleo-permafrost and climate impact studies. Despite their significance, their complex interactions with environmental variables and the impact of climate change on their evolution remain incompletely understood.

In this open session, we welcome contributions from the entire rock glacier community reflecting the different focuses and ranging from observations to modelling, from geophysical to remote sensing methodologies, from site-specific to regional studies in diverse geographic regions of the World. We would especially like to stimulate discussions about innovative methodologies and interdisciplinary approaches, aiming to improve the understanding of past and/or present processes and to assess future rock glacier evolution.

The evolution of glaciers, ice caps, and ice sheets can have a profound impact on the Earth system. For example, during the Quaternary, ice sheet growth and decay resulted in the fluctuation of sea levels, alteration of global air and ocean circulation patterns, sculpting of the landscape, and reorganisation of continental drainage. Landforms and sediments provide important information about the dimensions, distribution, and dynamics of past ice sheets. This record can be used to understand ice dynamics, reconstruct climate, and refine our understanding of the future response of ice masses to variations in climate. The aim of this session is to bring together researchers focused on reconstructing past glaciations at all spatial scales and from all parts of the world. We welcome studies of all relevant aspects, for example (i) glacial landforms and sediments, (ii) glacial reconstructions and chronologies, (iii) glaciologic and climatic interpretations, and (iv) numerical modelling. While the focus of the session will be Quaternary glaciations, studies from any geological period are encouraged to fully address the diversity of the topic.

This session seeks to bring together studies from the fields of glaciology, glacial geomorphology and geology, geochronology, climatology, remote sensing, and environmental history to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of science on Little Ice Age (LIA) glacier advances.
LIA advances have been documented in many of the world’s glaciated regions between roughly 1300 and 1900 CE, although the timing of these advances varies regionally.
The extent and variations of glaciers during the LIA are of major significance because they offer a unique snapshot of the “natural”, pre-industrial state of the cryosphere, before the global climate and environmental disruption caused by human activity since the beginning of the industrial era.
We invite contributions that examine any aspect of LIA glacier advances, ranging from studies aiming to reconstruct the timing and climatic conditions of these advances to those aiming to assess LIA glacier extent, ice thickness as well as post LIA glacier change, or studies on their societal impacts, such as the effects they had on local mountain communities. We welcome presentations employing diverse methods and data sources, including dating, remote sensing, or modelling approaches, and using satellite, instrumental, historical, and geomorphological records.
We hope that this session can help identify key knowledge gaps regarding LIA glacier advances and provide a road map to guide future research priorities and efforts in this field.

Global glacial retreat is increasingly producing new ice-free areas in various geomorphological settings, from high-mountain valleys to coastal lowlands. The associated losses include decreased provision of meltwater in summer, decreased reflection and cooling, and in some cases increased natural hazards. However, there may be advantages, such as carbon storage in the vegetation, soil development and enlargement of pasture lands in now-exposed glacial sediments. An integrated, multi-disciplinary projection of the future properties and value of deglaciated and deglacierized valleys remains elusive but is necessary as we prepare for an uncertain future under climate change. Most existing research of these systems focuses on quantifying rates of individual processes in deglaciated valleys, mostly as a function of time since deglaciation in a space-for-time approach. Multidisciplinary studies are starting to explore interactions between pedological, ecological, chemical and geomorphic processes, and impacts of drivers other than time are being related to proglacial dynamics as well. Experimental work is starting to directly measure the impact of human interventions to increase functionality and productivity.
We warmly invite contributions of all these types of studies, particularly when they improve methodology, are multidisciplinary or from previously understudied mountain regions – including in the global south.

Glacial Isostatic Adjustment (GIA) refers to the Earth's response to changes in ice sheets, leading to surface deformation, changes in gravity, rotation, and the state of stress. This process is primarily driven by ice-sheet dynamics and Earth's structure, impacting other Earth systems like the cryosphere and hydrosphere. A wealth of standardized observational data, such as GNSS measurements, relative sea levels, and satellite gravimetry, helps refine GIA models. These models enhance our understanding of ice-sheet history, sea-level changes, and Earth's rheology.

We welcome contributions on GIA's effects across various scales, including geodetic measurements, complex GIA modelling, GIA-induced sea-level changes, and the Earth's response to current ice-mass changes. We also invite abstracts on GIA's impact on nuclear waste sites, groundwater, and carbon resources. This session is co-sponsored by the SCAR sub-committee INSTANT-EIS, Earth - Ice - Sea level, in view of instabilities and thresholds in Antarctica (https://www.scar.org/science/instant/home/) and the IAG/IACS sub-commission 3.4 “Cryospheric Deformation”.

This interdisciplinary session brings together modellers and observationalists to present results and exchange knowledge and experience in the use of data assimilation in the cryospheric sciences such as inverse methods, geostatistics and machine learning. In numerous research fields it is now possible to not only deduce static features of a physical system but also to retrieve information on transient processes between different states or even regime shifts. In the cryospheric sciences a large potential for future developments lies at the intersection of observations and models with the aim to improve prognostic capabilities in space and time. Compared to other geoscientific disciplines like meteorology or oceanography, where techniques such as data assimilation have been well established for decades, in the cryospheric sciences only the foundation has been laid for the use of these techniques, one reason often being the sparsity of observations. We invite contributions from a wide range of methodological backgrounds - from satellite observations to deep-looking geophysical methods and advancements in numerical techniques - and research topics including permafrost, sea ice and snow to glaciers and ice sheets, covering static system characterisation as well as transient processes.

Earth’s cryosphere demonstrates itself in many shapes and forms, but we use similar geophysical and in-situ methods to study its wide spectrum: from ice-sheets and glaciers, to firn and snow, sea ice, permafrost, and en-glacial and subglacial environments.
In this session, we welcome contributions related to all methods in cryospheric measurements, including: advances in radioglaciology, active and passive seismology, geoelectrics, acoustic sounding, fibre-optic sensing, GNSS reflectometry, signal attenuation, and time delay techniques, cosmic ray neutron sensing, ROV and drone applications, and electromagnetic methods. Contributions can include field applications, new approaches in geophysical or in-situ survey techniques, or theoretical advances in data analysis processing or inversion. Case studies from all parts of the cryosphere, including snow and firn, alpine glaciers, ice sheets, glacial and periglacial environments, alpine and arctic permafrost as well as rock glaciers, or sea ice, are highly welcome.
This session will give you an opportunity to step out of your research focus of a single cryosphere type and to share experiences in the application, processing, analysis, and interpretation of different geophysical and in-situ techniques in these highly complex environments. This session has been running for over a decade and always produces lively and informative discussion. We have a successful history of PICO and other short-style presentations - submit here if you want a guaranteed short oral!

Fluvial systems cover much of the Earth’s surface; they convey water, sediments, and essential nutrients from the uplands to the sea, intermittently transferring these materials from the river channel to the adjacent floodplain. The routing of sediment and water through the channel network initiates complex process-form interactions as the river bed and banks adjust to changes in flow conditions. Despite their ubiquity, little is known about the landform-driven morphodynamic interactions taking place within the channel that ultimately determine patterns of sedimentation and changes of channel form. Furthermore, an understanding of how these process-form interactions scale with the size of the fluvial system is also currently lacking. Recent technological and methodological advances now afford us the opportunity to study and to quantify these process-form interactions in detail across a range of spatial and temporal scales.
This session aims to bring together interdisciplinary researchers working across field, experimental, and numerical modelling approaches who are advancing methods and providing new insights into: (i) sediment transport and morphodynamic functioning of fluvial systems, (ii) evaluating morphological change at variable spatial and temporal scales, such as at event vs. seasonal scales, and (iii) investigating the sedimentology of these river systems. We particularly welcome applications which investigate the morphodynamic response of fluvial systems in all types and sizes and we would specifically like to encourage submissions from early career researchers and students.

The United Nations has designated the 2020s as the decade of ecosystem restoration. In addition to existing regulations from the Water Framework Directive, the EU has recently adopted a nature restoration regulation aiming to restore 20% of EUs degraded ecosystems by 2030. Restoration of streams, rivers and their catchments is particularly important, as these are amongst the most threatened habitats globally, impacted by a cascade of pressures, including direct modification, catchment landuse, and climate change. Furthermore, restoration of riverscapes and their catchments are becoming increasingly important to dampen the effects of altered hydroclimatic regimes, yet more challenging to restore a moving target with altered flow and sediment regimes and habitat conditions. Our scientific understanding of riverscape restoration is challenged by the complexity and interdisciplinary nature of river processes and the lack of long-term, large-scale monitoring. In this session we wish to highlight a broad range of research that moves our understanding of riverscape management forward, in particular novel studies focusing on building river resilience to a changing climate. We also encourage submissions focused on any aspect of river management from different disciplines, including geomorphology, hydrology, and ecology. We hope to initiate discussion among an interdisciplinary group of researchers of how to take into account a changing climatic baseline in future river restoration and evaluation of restoration success.

Critical infrastructure, including bridges, dams, levees, pile foundations, spur dikes, and river training structures, is inevitably related to the morphodynamics of rivers, estuaries, and coastal areas. Such connections are particularly evident during post-flood assessments or after strong waves and storm surges events. While morphological changes are frequently observed on a large-scale, they are primarily driven by local factors, such as flow variability, coherent turbulent structures, sediment entrainment, and constant water-bed interactions. When infrastructure is introduced into dynamic water environments, its elements become key factors influencing morphodynamic processes. Understanding these interactions across scales is essential for sustainable water management and the long-term safety of infrastructure.

To address these challenges, it is crucial to integrate geomorphological insights into the layout, design, construction, and management of infrastructure that interacts with water flows. Despite extensive research, the stochastic nature of sediment-laden flow processes makes it challenging to establish reliable deterministic relationships between flow, erosion, and deposition.

The introduction of remote sensing and non-intrusive flow tracking methods provides new opportunities to study and quantify these processes with unprecedent spatial and temporal resolution. This session aims to provide a platform to showcase research that integrates field studies, experimental work, numerical modeling, and hybrid approaches to deepen our understanding of flow-structure interactions, morphodynamic responses to infrastructure in rivers/estuaries/coastal and nearshore areas, innovative sediment transport quantification methods, and turbulence analysis. The goal is to improve our ability to model and manage morphological change across multiple scales.
We invite contributions that focus on, but are not limited to, the following topics:
● Examining the impact of built structures on water flow and morphology
● Understanding the role of flow variability, sediment entrainment, and water-bed interactions in driving morphological change;
● Exploring remote sensing and non-intrusive methods to more accurately study and quantify flow and bed morphological processes;
● Understanding flow-structure interactions in hydraulic infrastructure;
● Developing innovative methods to monitor and quantify sediment transport dynamics.

Water is our planet’s most vital resource, and the primary agent in some of the biggest hazards facing society and nature. Recent extreme heat and flood events are clear demonstrations of how our planet’s climate is changing, underlining the significance of water both as a threat and as an increasingly volatile resource.
The accurate and timely measurement of streamflow is therefore more critical than ever to enable the management of water for ecology, for people and industry, for flood risk management and for understanding changes to the hydrological regime. Despite this, effective monitoring networks remain scarce, under-resourced, and often under threat on a global scale. Even where they exist, observational networks are increasingly inadequate when faced with extreme conditions, and lack the precision and spatial coverage to fully represent crucial aspects of the hydrological cycle.

This session aims to tackle this problem by inviting presentations that demonstrate new and improved methods and approaches to streamflow monitoring, including:
1) Innovative methodologies for measuring/modelling/estimating river stream flows;
2) Real-time acquisition of hydrological variables;
3) Remote sensing and earth observation techniques for hydrological & morphological monitoring;
4) Measurement in extreme conditions associated with the changing climate;
5) Measurement of sudden-onset extreme flows associated with catastrophic events;
6) Strategies to quantify and describe hydro-morphological evolution of rivers;
7) New methods to cope with data-scarce environments;
8) Inter-comparison of innovative & classical models and approaches;
9) Evolution and refinement of existing methods;
10) Guidelines and standards for hydro-morphological streamflow monitoring;
11) Quantification of uncertainties;
12) Development of expert networks to advance methods.

Contributions are welcome with an emphasis on innovation, efficiency, operator safety, and meeting the growing challenges associated with the changing climate, and with natural and anthropogenically driven disasters such as dam failures and flash floods.

Additionally, presentations will be welcomed which explore options for greater collaboration in advancing riverflow methods and which link innovative research to operational monitoring.

The transfer of sediments and associated contaminants plays an important role in catchment ecosystems as they directly influence water quality, habitat conditions, and biogeochemical cycles. Contaminants may include heavy metals, pesticides, nutrients, radionuclides, and various organic, as well as organometallic compounds. The environmental risk posed by sediment-bound contaminants is largely determined by the sources and rate at which sediments are delivered to surface water bodies, the residence time in catchments, lakes, and river systems, as well as biogeochemical transformation processes. However, the dynamics of sediment and contaminant redistribution is highly variable in space and time due to the complex non-linear processes involved. This session thus focuses on sources, transport pathways, storage and re-mobilization, and travel times of sediments and contaminants across temporal and spatial scales, as well as their impact on catchment and freshwater ecosystems.

This session particularly addresses the following issues:
- Delivery rates of sediments and contaminants from various sources (i.e. agriculture, urban areas, mining, industry or natural areas);
- Transport, retention and remobilization of sediments and contaminants in catchments and river reaches;
- Modelling of sediment and contaminant transport on various temporal and spatial scales;
- Biogeochemical controls on contaminant transport and transformation;
- Studies on sedimentary processes and morphodynamics, particularly sediment budgets;
- Linkages between catchment systems and lakes, including reservoirs;
- Analysis of sediment archives to appraise landscape scale variations in sediment and contaminant yield over medium to long time-scales;
- Impacts of sediments and contaminants on floodplain, riparian, hyporheic and other in-stream ecosystems;
- Response of sediment and contaminant dynamics in catchments, lakes and rivers to changing boundary conditions and human actions;
- Assessing human impact on landforms and geomorphological processes in sediment and contaminant transport.

“The truth is almost ten years since the Paris Agreement was adopted, the target of limiting long-term global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is hanging by a thread.
"The truth is the world is spewing emissions so fast that by 2030, a far higher temperature rise would be all but guaranteed. …
"Now is the time to mobilise, now is the time to act, now is the time to deliver. This is our moment of truth.” (Guterres, 2024)

One of the surest ways to mobilise, to act and deliver is through geo-education, geo-communication and geoethics. Humanity is dependent on both the climate and the ocean, and on their interaction. The danger of climate and ocean change can be applied, mutatis mutandis, to related threats, such as biodiversity, pollution, food security and fossil-fuel-driven war. Humanity appears to be in the grip of manic growth and ecological overshoot.

Far greater numbers of citizens than is currently the case need to increase their knowledge and communication skills in climate and ocean change and their underlying causes. This is achieved through a broad variety of methods: encounters, meetings, field trips, associations, classes, publications, peer pressure, workshops, geoethical awakening, social media, direct experience of extreme weather, association memberships, legal action and so on.

We welcome abstracts on a broad range of topics, from hands-on geo-communication of all kinds, through pedagogical ideas and practices, best practices, research, programme implementation and activism. Come and share your experience, your ideas, your anger, your vision, your research, your drive, your actions, your successes – from hands-on pedagogical ideas and practices, through geo-communication, curriculum matters and research, to policy and its implementation.

This session is organised in parallel to, but independently of, the special issue of the EGU journal *Geoscience Communication*, see https://gc.copernicus.org/articles/special_issue1271.html. You are invited to submit an article; be in touch directly with David.

In the face of climate change, Africa is more than ever in need of climate services, scientific infrastructure and skilled people who are trained in providing solutions for their countries in how best deal with the adverse impacts of climate change. Over the past years, European governments and funding agencies have invested in climate change research and capacity building in various regions of Africa. However, these initiatives, mostly work independently and do not seek for synergies or collaborations.
This session aims to bring these capacity building initiatives together, provide them a stage to present themselves and a platform for networking, finding synergies and collaborations. We invite initiatives of any kind to present their work related to climate change capacity development in Africa. This also includes climate change-related topics such as, floods, droughts, natural hazards, land degradation, and so on. We welcome the full-variety of capacity building initiatives, including small-scale teaching or workshops (online or on site), co-development of research or monitoring infrastructure, master programmes, doctoral programmes, training of local communities or single research projects that include a capacity development component.
After getting an insight in the full bandwidth of capacity development initiatives in this session, we aim to follow-up with a splinter meeting in which the foundation of a European-African Network for Capacity Development in climate change Adaptation research in Africa (NetCDA) will be discussed. The NetCDA network should provide the basis for future exchange, sharing best practices and finding collaborations between various initiatives and institutions. We invite all session participants and other interested climate scientists from both continents to attend this splinter meeting. More details of the timing and location of this splinter meeting will follow.

Geoethics is essential for tackling global human-caused changes. It integrates ethical considerations into geoscience, improving policy and decision-making. Geoscientists must provide accurate, transparent, and unbiased data to policymakers, ensuring decisions reflect environmental, social, and economic impacts. In times of rapid climate change, resource overexploitation, increasing risks, and environmental damages, geoethics promotes sustainable, just, and respectful geoscience practices. This framework encourages scientifically sound, socially responsible, and environmentally sustainable actions, building trust between scientists, policymakers, and the public through transparency, accountability, and community engagement. In practical terms, integrating geoethics into policymaking and decision-making involves:

a) Building Trust: Highlighting the importance of transparency, accountability, and community engagement in fostering trust between scientists, policymakers, decision-makers, and the public.
b) Transparent Communication: Clearly sharing scientific findings and uncertainties with all stakeholders to support informed and democratic decision-making.
c) Inclusive Practices: Involving local communities, indigenous peoples, and marginalized groups to ensure their voices are heard and their rights respected in geoscientific work.
d) Sustainable Solutions: Focusing on long-term sustainability over short-term gains to ensure resource extraction and land use do not compromise future generations' needs.
e) Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Working with other fields like sociology, economics, and political science to address complex environmental issues holistically.
f) Geoscience Education: Training young people to understand Earth system complexities and prepare the next generation of geoscientists to address global challenges.

By fostering a culture of ethical responsibility, geoscience can guide actions that mitigate adverse effects, promote resilience, and contribute positively to society. Ultimately, geoethics strengthens the capacity of geoscience to inform and influence policy, fostering a more sustainable and equitable future for all.
This session aims to collect and stimulate discussions about ideas, initiatives, project outcomes, tools (including new technologies), and case studies that highlight the positive contributions (as well as exemplify failures) of geoscientists in informing the decision-making and policy-making processes.

Sitting under a tree, you feel the spark of an idea, and suddenly everything falls into place. The following days and tests confirm: you have made a magnificent discovery — so the classical story of scientific genius goes…

But science as a human activity is error-prone, and might be more adequately described as "trial and error", or as a process of successful "tinkering" (Knorr, 1979). Thus we want to turn the story around, and ask you to share 1) those ideas that seemed magnificent but turned out not to be, and 2) the errors, bugs, and mistakes in your work that made the scientific road bumpy. What ideas were torn down or did not work, and what concepts survived in the ashes or were robust despite errors? We explicitly solicit Blunders, Unexpected Glitches, and Surprises (BUGS) from modeling and field or lab experiments and from all disciplines of the Geosciences.

Handling mistakes and setbacks is a key skill of scientists. Yet, we publish only those parts of our research that did work. That is also because a study may have better chances to be accepted for publication in the scientific literature if it confirms an accepted theory or if it reaches a positive result (publication bias). Conversely, the cases that fail in their test of a new method or idea often end up in a drawer (which is why publication bias is also sometimes called the "file drawer effect"). This is potentially a waste of time and resources within our community as other scientists may set about testing the same idea or model setup without being aware of previous failed attempts.

In the spirit of open science, we want to bring the BUGS out of the drawers and into the spotlight. In a friendly atmosphere, we will learn from each others' mistakes, understand the impact of errors and abandoned paths onto our work, and generate new insights for our science or scientific practice.

Here are some ideas for contributions that we would love to see:
- Ideas that sounded good at first, but turned out to not work.
- Results that presented themselves as great in the first place but turned out to be caused by a bug or measurement error.
- Errors and slip-ups that resulted in insights.
- Failed experiments and negative results.
- Obstacles and dead ends you found and would like to warn others about.

--
Knorr, Karin D. “Tinkering toward Success: Prelude to a Theory of Scientific Practice.” Theory and Society 8, no. 3 (1979): 347–76.

The session aims to foster collaboration and knowledge exchange between educators, academic institutions, and science communicators to enhance Earth Science education at the upper secondary level. Earth Science is a compulsory topic in several European upper secondary school curricula and a critical subject for understanding global challenges, but often lacks prominence in secondary education activities. This evidence is confirmed by the decreasing number of students enrolled in earth science degrees at university level. This session will showcase projects, teaching strategies, and educational resources designed to engage students and increase the relevance of Earth Science in the classroom. Presentations will highlight successful initiatives from teachers, schools, universities, and outreach programs, offering a platform for discussing best practices and challenges. Participants are invited to share their experiences and ideas to create a stronger network of support for Earth Science education.

Fieldwork is essential in geoscience, it provides direct and practical experiences, produces valuable data, validates hypotheses, contextualizes findings, encourages discovery, and helps to understand and eventually solve real-world challenges faced by everyone. Fieldwork is the foundation upon which a significant part of geoscience research and understanding is built. This session is dedicated to exploring the broad range of fieldwork-related topics for education and research that can be as diverse as the fieldwork itself. Topics evolve around novel methods for conducting, teaching and planning fieldwork in a safe and welcoming manner, best practises for managing field teams, addressing sigmatised subjects (personal hygiene, safety equipment) as well as working with local communities and utilizing and sharing existing infrastructure and expertise both inside and outside of institutions. This session provides a safe space to exchange ideas on more inclusive fieldwork practices and strategies.

Science communication includes the efforts of natural, physical and social scientists, communications professionals, and teams that communicate the process and values of science and scientific findings to non-specialist audiences outside of formal educational settings. The goals of science communication can include enhanced dialogue, understanding, awareness, enthusiasm, improving decision making, or influencing behaviors. Channels can include in-person interaction, online, social media, mass media, or other methods. This session invites presentations by individuals and teams on science communication practice, research, and reflection, addressing questions like:

What kind of communication efforts are you engaging in and how you are doing it?
How is social science informing understandings of audiences, strategies, or effects?
What are lessons learned from long-term communication efforts?

This session invites you to share your work and join a community of practice to inform and advance the effective communication of earth and space science.

Effective disaster risk management extends beyond the implementation of prevention, preparedness, response and recovery measures to include how well at-risk communities accept, understand, and engage with these measures. This scientific session aims to explore good practices and theoretical approaches in risk communication and citizen science, thus in line with the European Union Disaster Resilience goals.
We invite contributions from scientists, science communicators, and practitioners, with a particular emphasis on Early Career Scientists. Submissions should address various aspects of risk communication, including stakeholder engagement, cultural sensitivity, and the dynamics of communication from hazard preparation through crisis recovery, including communication during an emergency. Contributions that evaluate the impact of these efforts and incorporate science communication into daily practices are highly encouraged. We also welcome discussions on challenges such as reaching the right audiences, conveying targeted and effective messages, and behavioural obstacles. This session will provide a platform for sharing innovative approaches and fostering dialogue on improving public engagement and communication strategies. This session contributes to the European Commission’s disaster resilience goal no. 2 on ‘Prepare - Increasing risk awareness and preparedness of the population’ and the preparEU programme.
Participants are encouraged to also attend the short course and splinter meetings, which together with this session form a unified path, allowing for a comprehensive exploration of risk communication practices.

All science has uncertainty. Global challenges such as the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change illustrate that an effective dialogue between science and society requires clear communication of uncertainty. Responsible science communication conveys the challenges of managing uncertainty that is inherent in data, models and predictions, facilitating the society to understand the contexts where uncertainty emerges and enabling active participation in discussions. This session invites presentations by individuals and teams on communicating scientific uncertainty to non-expert audiences, addressing topics such as:

(1) Innovative and practical tools (e.g. from social or statistical research) for communicating uncertainty
(2) Pitfalls, challenges and solutions to communicating uncertainty with non-experts
(3) Communicating uncertainty in risk and crisis situations (e.g., natural hazards, climate change, public health crises)

Examples of research fitting into the categories above include a) new, creative ways to visualize different aspects of uncertainty, b) new frameworks to communicate the level of confidence associated with research, c) testing the effectiveness of existing tools and frameworks, such as the categories of “confidence” used in expert reports (e.g., IPCC), or d) research addressing the challenges of communicating high-uncertainty high-impact events.

This session encourages you to share your work and join a community of practice to inform and advance the effective communication of uncertainty in earth and space science.

Despite an ever-growing body of scientific literature outlining the need for radical transformations, efforts to address the climate and ecological crisis keep falling painfully short of what is necessary. At the same time, the situation continues to worsen as global warming gets dangerously close to 1.5 degrees. While the role of geoscientists has traditionally been to provide neutral information to be used by the public and policy makers, several studies pointed out that the main blockade to urgent climate action is not currently a lack of understanding or awareness or the situation (Oreskes, 2022, The trouble with the supply-side model of science) but rather opposition to necessary transformations by vested interests and powerful actors (Stoddard et al, 2021, Three decades of climate mitigation: Why haven’t we bent the emissions curve?). Our own institutions, universities, and research centers are also failing to rise to the challenge of this crisis and partly contribute to maintaining the status quo (Thierry et al, 2023, No research on a dead planet).
In that context, what role can geoscientists play to contribute to the urgent transformations necessary to mitigate the climate and ecological crisis? To explore this topic, we invite contributions that broadly address the following questions, whether from a theoretical perspective or through firsthand experiences:
– How to engage with civil society, stakeholders and policymakers to ensure that research findings lead to appropriate policies?
– How to assess and reduce the ecological footprint of scientific institutions?
– How to expand outreach and training efforts, in particular to enable under-represented actors, reduce power imbalances in climate politics, and oppose greenwashing?
– Should scientists engage in disruptive actions and civil disobedience to highlight the urgency of the situation, oppose destructive projects, and/or press on problematic actors?
– How can scientific institutions prevent reinforcing the status quo and instead contribute to radical transformations ?
In 2024, presentations considered: Outreach efforts towards policymakers or in rural areas, campaigns for universities to cut ties with the fossil industry, sustainable travel policies for researchers, strategies to debunk greenwashing, barriers to the public engagement of academics, and discussion about academic activism. We particularly encourage submissions presenting interdisciplinary work including social sciences.

Games have the power to ignite imaginations and place you in someone else’s shoes or situation, often forcing you into making decisions from perspectives other than your own. This makes them powerful tools for communication, through use in outreach, disseminating research, in education and teaching at all levels, and as a method to train the public, practitioners, and decision-makers in order to build environmental resilience.

Games can also inspire innovative and fun approaches to learning. Gamification and game-based approaches add an extra spark of engagement and interaction with a topic. Gaming technology (e.g. virtual reality) can transport and immerse people into new worlds providing fascinating and otherwise impossible experiences for learners.

In this session we welcome contributions from anyone who has used games, gaming technology, and/or game-based approaches in their research, their teaching, or public engagement activities.

Visit www.games4geoscience.wordpress.com to learn more about the session.

Modern-day challenges such as climate change, pollution, desertification, natural hazards, and species extinction demand urgent solutions. While science is often at the forefront of addressing these issues, art has traditionally been seen primarily as a source of entertainment. However, a growing community of artists and scientists is coming together to address these pressing concerns. Art, with its ability to evoke emotion, serves as a powerful tool for cognitive learning and delivering messages that reignite a sense of beauty and responsibility for the planet. Collaborations between scientists and artists are becoming essential in engaging people more deeply with environmental issues and promoting sustainable lifestyles. These interdisciplinary partnerships offer a unique way to communicate complex scientific topics to non-experts—particularly in areas like climate change, where public understanding can be fragmented or confused. Both scientific and artistic communities share a common interest and responsibility in raising awareness of planetary boundaries and the fragility of Earth's ecosystems. While traditional educational methods have addressed these challenges, science-art collaborations create new pathways for research and dialogue, offering a human and emotional context through artistic expression. This session aims to explore these interdisciplinary conversations through lectures, academic posters, and visual art displays. By symbiotically blending STEM and the arts, we hope to foster discussions on how these disciplines can collaborate to explore, communicate, and respond to the societal, economic, political, and environmental issues we face—ultimately driving more effective communication and action.

Following the success of previous years, this session will explore reasons for the under-representation of different groups (gender identities, sexual orientations, racial and cultural backgrounds, abilities, religions, nationality or geography, socioeconomic status, ages, career stages, etc.) by welcoming debate among scientists, decision-makers and policy analysts in the geosciences.

The session will focus on both obstacles that contribute to under-representation and on best practices and innovative ideas to remove those obstacles. Contributions are solicited on the following topics:

- Role models to inspire and further motivate others (life experience and/or their contributions to promote equality)
- Imbalanced representation, preferably supported by data, for awards, medals, grants, high-level positions, invited talks and papers
- Perceived and real barriers to inclusion (personally, institutionally, culturally)
- Recommendations for new and innovative strategies to identify and overcome barriers
- Gender Equality Plans (GEP) in European host institutions: the good, the bad, and the ugly
- Best practices and strategies to move beyond barriers, including:
• successful mentoring programmes;
• networks that work;
• specific funding schemes;
• examples of host institutions initiatives;

Report on situations that you may have experienced in light of recent socio-political changes.

This session is co-organised with the support of the European Research Council (ERC).

Evidence-based policymaking aims to ground public policies in the best available research and data, ensuring that decisions are informed by robust evidence rather than by ideology, assumptions, or political considerations. To support and inform policy, stakeholders need to engage in a way that addresses needs and develops solutions. To ensure this engagement is effective, it is important to identify the most effective formats for engagement to ensure re-searchers contributions enrich and strengthen local, national or international policy.
This session aims to show how research activities and outputs may impact society and policy beyond the academic world. It will highlight stories of success and failure from scientists who have engaged in policy or other activities that made critical societal impacts – either on an international, European, national, or local level – across different geoscience disciplines. Equally important, the session will also present the role of those working from within political institutions who have facilitated successful science-society-policy-dialogues. It will also aim to examine the various challenges that researchers face when engaging on the science-society-policy interface and various strategies that others have taken to manage and overcome them.

This session is relevant for researchers, policymakers, and those working on the interface from all career levels and science disciplines and will provide space for follow-up questions and a discussion with the participants at the session and at a splinter meeting during EGU25 week.

Science’s “open era” is here (to stay?). Data and software repositories make it possible to share and collectively develop tools and resources. Diamond open-access publishing and pre-print servers are breaking barriers to knowledge exchange. Free virtual meetings make science more accessible to those interested in listening, or speaking.

The benefits for the community are clear—better communication and more collaboration foster scientific advancement. It is therefore surprising that the vast majority of data-, tool-, and knowledge-sharing initiatives rely on the community and the community alone, without financial support from funding bodies and more often than not lacking the recognition they deserve.

We aim to bring together individuals and teams who have, in any way, served the wider geoscience community through knowledge, data, or tool creation and/or distribution. Such efforts include—but are not limited to—online learning platforms, transdisciplinary databases, open-access software and publishing.

Ultimately, this session seeks to:
1. Be a space for sharing, advertising, discussing, and recognising the value of existing resources and initiatives
2. Discuss the challenges faced by those behind them (i.e., lack of funding and institutional support) and possible strategies to eliminate these
3. Inspire new efforts, initiatives, and projects

The growing complexity of environmental challenges and the increasing demand for geoscientific expertise have driven significant advances in how the discipline is taught and learned. As the field of geoscience evolves, so too have the educational approaches that prepare the next generation of geoscientists. This session will explore the latest innovations and emerging trends in geoscience education research, focusing on how these advancements are shaping the way we teach and learn, and providing a platform to share experiences, discuss challenges, and explore opportunities for further innovation in geoscience education.

Scientists have now been sounding the alarm about the climate and ecological crisis for decades. Each new report further outlines the necessity to radically change course, to rapidly reduce CO2 emissions and more generally human impacts on the environment if we are to avoid disastrous consequences on societies and ecosystems. Yet, these warnings have invariably been met with insufficient responses, political inertia, or worse active denial or institutionalised efforts to delay action. Meanwhile, a strong climate movement has emerged, led primarily by young activists demanding immediate climate action to ensure a liveable planet and a just future for all. A growing number of scientists and academics have also been starting to contemplate which roles they could most effectively take on in these movements, either from joining or providing external.

The growing interest and associated curiosity towards these movements from the scientific community was confirmed by the large attendance to EGU24’s events about academic activism. At the same time, many academics are unsure about where to start, how and where to find like-minded colleagues and grass-root organisations, or how to set up campaigns and actions to push for change at their institutions and beyond. This short course aims at bridging this gap by providing first-hand experience and practical tools to academics eager to organise within or outside their institution, and/or mobilise fellow colleagues to join climate actions. Equally important, the course will touch on relevant aspects of mental health: From the perspective of climate anxiety, to difficult-to-navigate dynamics within the movement, to a more general activist fatigue.

The course will be divided into 3 parts:
1. A starters part, with a short introduction on possible roles for academics in the climate movement, followed by presentations from experienced organisers about setting up a campaign at your own university, mobilising colleagues and organising events
2. A group work part, where participants will choose one proposed case as an example for the organisation of a campaign or event, and discuss it as a group, based on the input part and their own knowledge
3. A debriefing part, where some of the groups will present their work to the rest of the participants. Potential critical aspects related to organisational roadblocks, internal group dynamics, or repercussions that might come with certain forms of activism will be discussed

Are you unsure about how to bring order in the extensive program of the General Assembly? Are you wondering how to tackle this week of science? Are you curious about what EGU and the General Assembly have to offer? Then this is the short course for you!

During this course, we will provide you with tips and tricks on how to handle this large conference and how to make the most out of your week at this year's General Assembly. We'll explain the EGU structure, the difference between EGU and the General Assembly, we will dive into the program groups and we will introduce some key persons that help the Union function.

This is a useful short course for first-time attendees, those who have previously only joined us online, and those who haven’t been to Vienna for a while!

The European Geosciences Union (EGU) is the largest Geosciences Union in Europe, largely run by volunteers. Conferences, journals, policy making and scientific communication are all important parts of EGU.

Whatever your closest link with EGU, would you like to get more involved?

Perhaps you are interested in running events, being a representative or being part of a committee. In this short course, we will provide an overview of all the activities of EGU, which are much more than just the General Assembly. We will give practical tips on how to get involved, who to contact and where to find specific information if you want to organise events, become an editor or nominate yourself for Division President. From blog writing to organising networking events, there’s something for everyone.

LGBTQIA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer, Intersex, Asexual, plus; or LGBT for short) geoscientists likely have to face more obstacles throughout their career than their cisgender/heterosexual colleagues. These barriers can take many forms, e.g., inflexible bureaucratic limits on name/gender marker, changes on documentation, a lack of training for cruise/field leaders on LGBT topics, a lack of support for transgender and gender non-conforming people on field trips and research cruises, and safety and medical considerations LGBT people must account for when travelling for either field work/cruises or when moving countries for a new position. These obstacles can be made smaller and overcome; with awareness and understanding by colleagues and initiatives, LGBT academics can thrive and contribute to research.

In this short course, our invited speakers will discuss some of these topics and share their stories about the barriers they are dealing with or have overcome. We will also discuss policy developments over the recent years at institutions in different European and non-European countries, and on EGU General Assembly level, with a focus on future challenges and improvements to come.

Scientists have now been sounding the alarm about the climate and ecological crisis for decades. Each new report further outlines the necessity to radically change course, to rapidly reduce CO2 emissions and more generally human impacts on the environment if we are to avoid disastrous consequences on societies and ecosystems. Yet, these warnings have invariably been met with insufficient responses, political inertia, or worse active denial or institutionalised efforts to delay action. Meanwhile, a strong climate movement has emerged, led primarily by young activists demanding immediate climate action to ensure a liveable planet and a just future for all. A growing number of scientists and academics have also been starting to contemplate which roles they could most effectively take on in these movements, either from joining or providing external.

The growing interest and associated curiosity towards these movements from the scientific community was confirmed by the large attendance to EGU24’s events about academic activism. At the same time, many academics are unsure about where to start, how and where to find like-minded colleagues and grass-root organisations, or how to set up campaigns and actions to push for change at their institutions and beyond. This short course aims at bridging this gap by providing first-hand experience and practical tools to academics eager to organise within or outside their institution, and/or mobilise fellow colleagues to join climate actions. Equally important, the course will touch on relevant aspects of mental health: From the perspective of climate anxiety, to difficult-to-navigate dynamics within the movement, to a more general activist fatigue.

The course will be divided into 3 parts:
1. A starters part, with a short introduction on possible roles for academics in the climate movement, followed by presentations from experienced organisers about setting up a campaign at your own university, mobilising colleagues and organising events
2. A group work part, where participants will choose one proposed case as an example for the organisation of a campaign or event, and discuss it as a group, based on the input part and their own knowledge
3. A debriefing part, where some of the groups will present their work to the rest of the participants. Potential critical aspects related to organisational roadblocks, internal group dynamics, or repercussions that might come with certain forms of activism will be discussed

In this short course we will address the increasing role of artificial intelligence (AI) in geoscientific research, guiding participants through the various stages of the research process where AI tools can be effectively implemented, however with responsibility. We will explore freely available AI tools that can be used for data analysis, model development, and research publication. Additionally, the course aims to provoke reflections on the ethical implications of AI use, addressing concerns such as data bias, transparency, and the potential for misuse. Participants will engage in interactive discussions to explore what constitutes responsible and acceptable use of AI in geoscientific research, aiming to establish a set of best practices for integrating AI into scientific workflows.

Crafting and publishing papers is a crucial part of science communication, but it can be challenging. Whether you are working on your first draft, or perfecting your tenth, there can still be uncertainties about good writing and the publishing process. This course aims to provide early career scientists with straightforward guidelines for effectively communicating their research and, consequently, enhancing their prospects of successful publication. In this short course you will have the opportunity to meet editors of internationally renowned journals in the field of geoscience, hydrology and biogeoscience. After a short introduction of the editors, we will explore various facets of scientific writing and publishing, such as:
• How to start and improve an efficient writing process?
• What are the duties, roles and rights of editors, authors and reviewers?
• How to choose a suitable journal for your manuscript and what is important for early career authors?
• How to address reviewers' comments?
In this short course, there will be an opportunity to have an open discussion about how to make your manuscript ready for submission and navigate the peer-reviewing process. Together with the editors from different journals, we will explore other aspects, complementary to writing a paper, such as preparing the cover letters, choosing a suitable journal and understanding your rights as an author.
If you like to learn what is required to become a good peer-reviewer join the short course: Meet the Editors (3): How to peer-review - Fundamentals & EGU’s model. Both short courses can be attended independently.

Peer-reviewing is the heart of quality control when it comes to publishing our scientific results. It is almost exclusively based on voluntary service by the scientific community itself. Yet peer-reviewers are currently the most limited human resource in scientific publishing. Insights about the peer-reviewing process are essential for the successful publication of your manuscript (if you are interested in more details, see also the short course “Meet the Editors (1 & 2): How to write, revise and publish your manuscript”), but the prospect of reviewing scientific manuscripts can appear daunting, especially to early career scientists. Open questions regarding the general role as reviewer, expectations by the journal editors, the degree of detail and pitfalls, but also ethical responsibilities may lead to doubts. This short course offers the opportunity to meet editors of internationally renowned journals – among others, from EGU journals – to get answers to those questions and to eliminate the doubts for one’s eligibility/aptitude as a reviewer:
• How is the peer-review process organized? How do editors search for and select reviewers?
• What are (and are not!) the duties and roles of reviewers?
• What are the ethical responsibilities as reviewer? How do I deal with conflict of interests?
• What are the benefits of voluntary peer-reviewing?
• Tips for my first review: What to focus on and how to structure?
• What are the dos and don’ts for appropriate peer-reviewing?
• What help can I get during the peer-review process?
Subsequently, the EGU peer-review model is presented as well as the details that are specific to the EGU journals. This includes the advantages of the EGU’s interactive open access publishing with multi-stage open peer review, as compared to traditional journals with closed peer review. Participants will have the opportunity to indicate their interest in the next edition of the EGU Peer Review Training (Fall 2025), where hands-on experience will be provided including reviewing preprints on EGUsphere, to complement the theory learned in the course. Participants who successfully complete the full training will be added to the reviewer data base for the EGU journals, so that they are visible to the journal editors and can efficiently contribute to the dissemination of high-quality science.

Building a successful academic career is challenging. Doing so while also raising a family can push you to your limits. Many early- and mid-career scientists grapple with balancing family life and academic responsibilities. The fear-of-missing-out dualism between family and academia causes an inner conflict and feeling of injustice and inadequateness. Families often find themselves confronted with what feels like a personal problem when, in reality, it is a shared societal issue. Modern families come in diverse forms, including dual-career parents, single parents, same-sex parents, and various shared parenting arrangements. The academic world must recognize and adapt to this reality, aligning with broader themes of inclusion, participation, and diversity.

It is crucial to find support and confidence in moving forward as an individual while remaining aligned with your personal values and goals. As a community, we need to openly discuss parenting in academia so that we can demand and develop sustainable solutions that benefit everyone, rather than repeatedly fighting private battles to follow the academic career dream. Parenthood can also shift your priorities, which may lead you to consider leaving academia altogether.

This short course provides a platform that allows an honest exchange on diverse experiences and continue the discussion from previous EGU General Assemblies on this topic. It will:
1. Provide insight into how being a parent impacts everyday academic life.
2. Present scientific studies on parenting in academia and explore the varying cultural and societal experiences.
3. Highlight personal experiences made by a panel of current and previous academic parents.
4. Conclude with an open discussion addressing public discourse on equal parenting and work-life balance.
This course is intended for scientists considering starting a family, current academic parents seeking to connect, and faculty staff responsible for supporting parenting employees.

The European Research Council (ERC) is a leading funding body at European level. It aims to support excellent investigator-driven frontier research across all fields of science. The ERC offers various outstanding funding opportunities, including grant budgets for individual scientists of up to €3.5 million. ERC calls are open to researchers around the world: all nationalities of applicants are welcome for projects carried out at a host institution in European Union member states or/and associated countries. At this session, the main features of ERC funding will be presented, including the recent changes implemented in the work programme concerning the evaluation process. Furthermore, two invited speakers, a current ERC grantee and a former member of the evaluation panel, will provide different perspectives of their experience with the ERC evaluation.

This two-unit short course aims at introducing conference participants to the basic concepts of geodiversity, geoheritage and geoconservation.
Geodiversity (the overall abiotic elements, their values and connections of the Earth) and geoheritage studies are multidisciplinary, drawing from all sides of geosciences and extending them into the humanities, geoarchaeology, spatial planning, territorial and risk management, economics, tourism, or culture using integrated and interdisciplinary research approaches. During the last three decades, geodiversity and geoheritage research experienced a considerable growth that confirm both scientific and public relevance of these topics as the science branch is in a close connection with the UN Sustainable Development Goals
In this course, the basic definitions of geodiversity, geoheritage and geoconservation and their connections to various science subjects and everyday life are explored by experienced researchers and Early Career Scientists with a range of backgrounds. We will cover the following subjects:
1. Introduction: Geodiversity and geoheritage: A multidisciplinary approach to valuing, conserving and managing abiotic nature
2. Principles and conceptual aspects of geodiversity research
3. How to assess geodiversity and why is it important?
Break
4. Geosite conservation: principles and management objectives
5. Geoheritage evaluation and managing conservation to disseminate geoscientific knowledge
6. Geotourism promotion of geoheritage – good practices

Our aim is to introduce participants to the basic concepts of this relatively young science field. Participants in the course will not only receive comprehensive theoretical knowledge but will also be actively engaged in practical activities. They will have the opportunity to apply various methodologies for geosite and geodiversity assessment, enhancing both their understanding and hands-on experience in the field. Participants will also have the chance to explore geoheritage through virtual field trips. At the end of the course a Q+A will provide the audience with a chance to interact with the panel. The course is aimed particularly at early career scientists, but anyone with an interest in geoheritage will find it useful. Attendees are invited to share and discuss their ideas, initiatives and plans that involve geoscientific heritage identification, evaluation, management or conservation throughout the whole course.

Geoscience communication often involves conveying complex concepts to diverse audiences across cultural and linguistic boundaries.

This short course is designed to equip you with the skills needed to communicate science effectively across cultures, focusing on the unique challenges geoscientists face in this context.

Through real-world examples drawn from personal and peers’ experiences, along with interactive exercises, we will explore how cultural perspectives shape the understanding of geoscientific data and how to tailor messages to approach different audiences.

You’ll learn practical communication strategies for addressing cultural differences in interpreting scientific concepts, translating complex geoscientific data into culturally relevant messages, and overcoming language barriers.
The ultimate aim is to tackle inequalities and promote Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) in science outreach.

The short course will conclude with an open debate and Q&A. Bring your experience, have your say!
The way of doing outreach has radically changed in the last decades, and scientists can now take advantage of many channels and resources to tailor and deliver their message to the public: to name a few, scientists can do outreach through social media, by writing blogs, recording podcasts, or organising community events.
This short course aims to give practical examples of different outreach activities, providing tips and suggestions from personal and peers’ experiences to start and manage an outreach project. Specific attention will be paid to the current challenges of science communication, which will encompass the theme of credibility and reliability of the information, the role of communication in provoking a response to critical global issues, and how to tackle inequities and promote EDI in outreach, among others.
The last part of the course will be devoted to an open debate on specific hot topics regarding outreach. Have your say!

The scientific communication landscape in the digital era is rapidly becoming all about effectively delivering ideas in brief. As scientific conferences move from longer physical meetings to more condensed hybrid formats, not only are short presentations necessary for pitching yourself to senior scientists or your next entrepreneurial venture to Venture Capitalists, but also for promoting your research. The opportunities of networking rarely reveal themselves, unless you are able to tell a brief, informative, and compelling story about you and your research.
It is truly an art to engage people through these short presentations and ignite a fire in their hearts, which will burn long enough for them to remember you and reach out to you later about relevant opportunities. While practice makes perfect is the mantra for delivering power-packed short presentations, there are several tricks to make your content stand out and set yourself apart from the crowd.
In this hybrid format course, we will bring together ideas and tips from years of sci-comm experience to provide you a one stop shop with the tricks of the trade. Finally, a hands-on exercise where participants will receive structured feedback on all aspects of their talk will help solidify the learning outcomes. The learning objectives of this short course are as follows:
Structuring a killer elevator pitch – learning from 1/2/3-min examples
3 minute
2019 Monash 3MT Winner - Beatrice Chiew, Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences
Three Minute Thesis (3MT) 2013 QUT winner - Megan Pozzi
Knowing your audience – harnessing the power of tailored openings/closings
Captivating delivery – leveraging body language to your advantage
TED Talk: How to speak so that people want to listen: https://youtu.be/eIho2S0ZahI
Harnessing creativity - choosing the right medium
Enunciating to engage – communicating across borders
Effectively practising your pitch – making the best of your time + confidence (maybe also acting training - presentations are performances)
Early career and underrepresented scientists are particularly encouraged to participate as they can gain the most from the learning outcomes of this short course.

Discover the basics of Geodesy and geodetic data! Geodetic data, from GNSS to gravity measurements, play a crucial role in various Earth sciences, including hydrology, glaciology, geodynamics, oceanography, and seismology. Curious about what these data can (and cannot) tell us? This short course offers a crash course in core geodetic concepts, giving you the insights you need to better understand the advantages and limitations of geodetic data. While you won’t become a full-fledged geodesist by the end, you’ll walk away with a clearer picture of how to use these datasets across various fields. Led by scientists from the Geodesy division, this course is open to all, whether you frequently work with geodetic data or are simply curious about what geodesists do. Expect lively discussions and practical insights. For all geodesists, get the chance to learn what non-geodesists need when working with geodetic data!

This 60-minute short course is part of a quintet of introductory 101 courses on Geodesy, Geodynamics, Geology, Seismology, and Tectonic Modelling. All courses are led by experts who aim to make complex Earth science concepts accessible to non-experts.

This short course aims to introduce non-geologists to the geological, petrological, and morphological principles that are used by geologists to study system earth.

The data available to geologists is often minimal, incomplete, and only partly representative for the geological history of our planet. To overcome these challenges, geologists need to learn the necessary observational skills, field, and analytical techniques needed to acquire and interpret the data, in addition to developing a logical way of thinking.

In this course we cover the following subjects:
1) Introduction to the principles of geology.
2) Geochronology and isotope geochemistry.
3) Structural geology and deformation.
4) Landscape morphology as tectonic constraints.
5) Q&A!

Our aim is not to make you the next specialist in geology, but we will try and make you aware of the challenges a geologist faces when they go out into the field or work in the lab. We will also address currently used methodologies for the collection of geological data, to give other earth scientists a feel for the capabilities and limitations of geological research.

This 60-minute short course is part of a quintet of introductory 101 courses on Geodynamics, Seismology, Tectonics, and Geodesy. All courses are led by experts who aim to make complex Earth science concepts accessible to non-experts.

Transdisciplinary research offers a powerful approach to tackling complex challenges in natural hazards and risk management, but it also presents unique challenges, particularly for early career scientists and practitioners. This short course is specifically designed to equip early career participants with practical tools and strategies for effectively engaging in and contributing to transdisciplinary projects. By focusing on the cross-fertilisation of hard and social sciences, the course will provide actionable insights into how to communicate across disciplines, deliver impactful research, and find common ground for collaboration. Participants will engage in hands-on activities and discussions, drawing from the experiences of leading projects such as The HuT (https://thehut-nexus.eu), PARATUS (https://www.paratus-project.eu), MYRIAD (https://www.myriadproject.eu), and DIRECTED (https://directedproject.eu). Attendees are also welcome to join the scientific session and splinter meeting that are part of this unified path, allowing them to choose between engaging in the entire programme or specific parts according to their interests.

Code is read far more often than it's written, yet some still believe that complex, unreadable code equates to a better algorithm. In reality, the opposite is true. Writing code that not only works but is also clear, maintainable, and easy to modify can significantly reduce the cognitive load of coding, freeing up more time for scientific research. This short course introduces essential programming practices, from simple yet powerful techniques like effective naming, to more advanced topics such as unit testing, version control, and managing virtual environments. Through real-life examples, we will explore how to transform code from convoluted to comprehensible.

Software plays a pivotal role in various scientific disciplines. Research software may include source code files, algorithms, computational workflows, and executables. It refers mainly to code meant to produce data, less so, for example, plotting scripts one might create to analyze this data. An example of research software in our field are computational models of the environment. Models can aid pivotal decision-making by quantifying the outcomes of different scenarios, e.g., varying emission scenarios. How can we ensure the robustness and longevity of such research software? This short course teaches the concept of sustainable research software. Sustainable research software is easy to update and extend. It will be easier to maintain and extend that software with new ideas and stay in sync with the most recent scientific findings. This maintainability should also be possible for researchers who did not originally develop the code, which will ultimately lead to more reproducible science.

This short course will delve into sustainable research software development principles and practices. The topics include:
- Properties and metrics of sustainable research software
- Writing clear, modular, reusable code that adheres to coding standards and best practices of sustainable research software (e.g., documentation, unit testing, FAIR for research software).
- Using simple code quality metrics to develop high-quality code
- Documenting your code using platforms like Sphinx for Python

We will apply these principles to a case study of a reprogrammed version of the global WaterGAP Hydrological Model (https://github.com/HydrologyFrankfurt/ReWaterGAP). We will showcase its current state in a GitHub environment along with example source code. The model is written in Python but is also accessible to non-python users. The principles demonstrated apply to all coding languages and platforms.

This course is intended for early-career researchers who create and use research models and software. Basic programming or software development experience is required. The course has limited seats available on a first-come-first-served basis.

Python is one of the fastest growing programming languages and has moved to the forefront in the earth system sciences (ESS), due to its usability, the applicability to a range of different data sources and, last but not least, the development of a considerable number of ESS-friendly and ESS-specific packages.

This interactive Python course is aimed at ESS researchers who are interested in adding a new programming language to their repertoire. Except for some understanding of fundamental programming concepts (e.g. loops, conditions, functions etc.), this course presumes no previous knowledge of and experience in Python programming.

The goal of this course is to give the participants an introduction to the Python fundamentals and an overview of a selection of the most widely-used packages in ESS. The applicability of those packages ranges from (simple to advanced) number crunching (e.g. Numpy), to data analysis (e.g. Xarray, Pandas) to data visualization (e.g. Matplotlib).

The course will be grouped into different sections, based on topics discussed, packages introduced and field of application. Furthermore, each section will have an introduction to the main concepts e.g. fundamentals of a specific package and an interactive problem-set part.

This course welcomes active participation in terms of both on-site/virtual discussion and coding. To achieve this goal, the i) course curriculum and material will be provided in the form of Jupyter Notebooks ii) where the participants will have the opportunity to code up the iii) solutions to multiple problem sets and iv) have a pre-written working solution readily available. In these interactive sections of the course, participants are invited to try out the newly acquired skills and code up potentially different working solutions.

We very much encourage everyone who is interested in career development, data analysis and learning a new programming to join our course.

Visualisation of scientific data is an integral part of scientific understanding and communication. Scientists have to make decisions about the most effective way to communicate their results every day. How do we best visualise the data to understand it ourselves? How do we best visualise our results to communicate with others? Common pitfalls can be overcrowding, overcomplicated or suboptimal plot types, or inaccessible colour schemes. Scientists may also get overwhelmed by the graphics requirements of different publishers, for presentations, posters, etc. This short course is designed to help scientists improve their data visualisation skills so that the research outputs would be more accessible within their own scientific community and reach a wider audience.
Topics discussed include:
- golden rules of DataViz;
- choosing the most appropriate plot type and designing a good DataViz;
- graphical elements, fonts and layout;
- colour schemes, accessibility and inclusiveness;
- creativity vs simplicity – finding the right balance;
- figures for scientific journals (graphical requirements, rights and permissions);
- tools for effective data visualisation.
This course is co-organized by the Young Hydrologic Society (YHS), enabling networking and skill enhancement of early career researchers worldwide. Our goal is to help you make your figures more accessible to a wider audience, informative and beautiful. If you feel your graphs could be improved, we welcome you to join this short course.

Global challenges, such as climate change and natural hazards, are becoming increasingly complex and interdependent, and solutions have to be global in scope and based on a firm scientific understanding of the challenges we face. At the same time, Science and technology are playing an increasingly important role in a complex geopolitical landscape. In this difficult setting, scientific collaboration can not only be used to help address global challenges but also to foster international relations and build bridges across geopolitical divisions. Science diplomacy is a broad term used both to describe the various roles that science and researchers play in bridging geopolitical gaps and finding solutions to international issues, and also the study of how science intertwines with diplomacy in pursuing these goals


During this Short Course, experts will introduce key science diplomacy concepts and outline the skills that are required to effectively engage in science diplomacy. They will also provide practical insights on how researchers can actively participate in science diplomacy, explore real-life examples of science diplomacy, and highlight resources where participants can learn more about science diplomacy moving forward.

This Short Course is of interest to researchers from all disciplines and career levels.

Assessing the spatial heterogeneity of environmental variables is a challenging problem in real applications when numerical approaches are needed. This is made more difficult by the complexity of Natural Phenomena, which are characterized by (Chiles and Delfiner, 2012):
- being unknown: their knowledge is often incomplete, derived from limited and sparse samples;
- dimensionality: they can be represented in two- or three-dimensional domains;
- complexity: deterministic interpolators (i.e., Inverse Distance Weighted) may fail in providing exhaustive spatial distribution models, as they do not consider uncertainty;
- uniqueness: invoking a probabilistic approach, they can be assumed as a realization of a random process and described by regionalized variables.
Geostatistics provides optimal solutions to this issue, offering tools to accurately predict values and uncertainty in unknown locations while accounting for the spatial correlation of samples.

The course will address theoretical and practical methods for evaluating data heterogeneity in computational domains, exploiting the interplay between geometry processing, geostatistics, and stochastic approaches. It will be mainly split into 4 parts, as follows:
- Theoretical Overview: Introduction to Random Function Theory and Measures of Spatial Variability
- Modeling Spatial Dependence: An automatic solution to detect both isotropic and anisotropic spatial correlation structures
- The role of Unstructured Meshes: Exploration of flexible, robust, and adaptive geometric modeling, coupled with stochastic simulation algorithms
- Filling the Mesh: Developing a compact and tangible spatial model, that incorporates all alternative realizations, statistics, and uncertainty

The course will offer a comprehensive understanding of key steps to create a spatial predictive model with geostatistics. We will also promote MUSE (Modeling Uncertainty as a Support for Environments) (Miola et al., STAG2022) as an innovative and user-friendly open-source software, that implements the entire methodology. Tips on how to use MUSE will be provided, along with explanations of its structure and executable commands. Impactful examples will be used to show the effectiveness of geostatistical modeling with MUSE and the flexibility to use it in different scenarios, varying from geology to geochemistry.

The course is designed for everyone interested in geostatistics and spatial distribution models, regardless of their prior experience.

Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding is a noninvasive method to detect biodiversity in a variety of environments that has many exciting applications for geosciences. In this short course, we introduce eDNA metabarcoding to a geoscience audience and present potential research applications.

Database documentation and sharing is a crucial part of the scientific process, and more scientists are choosing to share their data on centralised data repositories. These repositories have the advantage of guaranteeing immutability (i.e., the data cannot change), which is not so amenable to developing living databases (e.g., in continuous citizen science initiatives). At the same time, citizen science initiatives are becoming more and more popular in various fields of science, from natural hazards to hydrology, ecology and agronomy.

In this context, distributed databases offer an innovative approach to both data sharing and evolution. These systems have the distinct advantage of becoming more resilient and available as more users access the same data, and as distributed systems, contrarily to decentralised ones, do not use blockchain technology, they are orders of magnitude more efficient in data storage as well as completely free to use. Distributed databases can also mirror exising data, so that scientists can keep working in their preferred Excel, OpenOffice, or other software while automatically syncing database changes to the distributed web in real time.

This workshop will present the general concepts behind distributed, peer-to-peer systems. Attendees will then be guided through an interactive activity on Constellation, a scientific software for distributed databases, learning how to both create their own databases as well as access and use others' data from the network. Potential applications include citizen science projects for hydrological data collection, invasive species monitoring, or community participation in managing natural hazards such as floods.

3D data are more and more available and used in earth sciences for a large variety of purposes (glacial changes, forestry, erosion in rivers, changes of land use, sediment transport, landslides, etc). A large variety of methods are now available to acquire such data on the field (terrestrial or airborne LiDAR, photogrammetry from drones or cameras). Our team has developed two plugins freely available in CloudCompare to process point clouds: 3DMASC (Letard et al, 2023) for general purpose classification, and G3Point (Steer et al, 2023) for grain segmentation and features extraction. In this short course, participants will learn how to efficiently use 3DMASC to classify fluvial environments (typically vegetation, rock and sediments) and then apply G3Point on sediments to segment grains and extract their geometries (size, orientation). Workshop material: TLS data set acquired along a fluvial reach (small bedrock gorges and an alluvial bar) provided to the participants.

The ongoing atmospheric warming has a huge effect on the components of terrestrial cryosphere. Therefore, there is a great need to have operational monitoring networks to understand the impacts and long-term changes of the cryosphere. Global Observing Monitoring Systems recognize three major Essential Climate Variables in permafrost, which are permafrost temperature, active layer thickness and rock glacier velocity. The monitoring of these parameters is covered by groups of Global Terrestrial Network – Permafrost (GTN-P) and Rock Glacier Inventories and Kinematics (RGIK), which will collaborate on the Short Course organisation. Our aim is to provide the participants: a) general background on GTN-P and RGIK activities b) The latest updates and demonstration of new version of GTN-P database c) Current development of RGIK database and monitoring standards

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is probably the widest and most known crowdsourced database of geospatial information. Its data have the potential to be harnessed to address a variety of scientific and policy questions, from urban planning to demographic studies, environmental monitoring, energy simulations and many others.
Understanding the structure and the variety of content in OSM can enable researchers and policymakers to use it as a relevant dataset for their specific objectives.
Moreover, familiarity with tools and services for filtering and extracting data per geographic area or topic can empower users to tailor OSM data to meet their unique needs. Additionally, learning to contribute new data to OSM enriches the database and fosters a collaborative environment that supports ongoing geospatial research and community engagement both for researchers themselves and also in interactions with stakeholders and citizens. By actively participating in the OSM community, geoscientists can ensure that the data remains current and relevant, ultimately enhancing the impact of their work in addressing pressing environmental and societal challenges.
The short course will begin with an introduction to the concepts and content of OpenStreetMap, followed by a brief review of services and tools for filtering, extracting, and downloading data. Participants will engage in hands-on activities to contribute new data directly, along with hints and tips on how to understand and evaluate the pros and cons of its open and collaborative foundational principles.

WEkEO offers a single access point to all of the environmental data provided by the Copernicus programme, as well as additional data from its four partner organisations. While data access is the first step for research based on EO data, the challenges of handling data soon become overwhelming with the increasing volume of Earth Observation data available. To cope with this challenge and to tame the Big Earth Data, WEkEO offers a cloud-based processing service for Earth Observation data coming from the Copernicus programme and beyond.
This course will explain new trends and developments in accessing, analysing and visualizing earth observation data by introducing concepts around serverless processing, parallel processing of big data and data cube generation in the cloud.
The session will begin with a theoretical introduction to cloud-based big data processing and data cube generation, followed by a demonstration how the participants can utilize these concepts within the WEkEO environment using its tools. Participants will have the opportunity to apply the concepts and tools in multi-disciplinary environmental use cases bringing together different kinds of satellite data and earth observation products as data cubes in the cloud.
The course will start with a beginner-level introduction and demonstration before introducing more advanced functionalities of the WEkEO services. Prior knowledge of satellite data analysis/Python programming would be an advantage but is not a prerequisite. Comprehensive training material will be provided during the course to ensure that participants with varying degree of knowledge of data processing can follow and participate.