We studied coastal sea floor terraces in parts of the Baltic Sea using various types of sonar data, sediment cores and video. Terraces (~ 1 m high, > 100 m long) are widespread in depths < 15 m, and are formed in glacial clay. Our study supports an origin from groundwater flow through silty layers, undermining overlying layers when discharged at the sea floor. Submarine groundwater discharge like these may be a significant source of freshwater to the Baltic Sea that needs to be studied further.

In this study, we examine river patterns and the evolution of the landscape within the Marlborough Fault System, South Island, New Zealand, where the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates collide. We find that faulting, uplift, river capture and the long-lived nature of the drainage network all dictate river patterns at this site. Based on these results and a wealth of previous geologic studies, we propose two broad stages of landscape evolution over the last 25 million years of orogenesis.

This work is the first assessment of the suitability of the in situ ¹⁰Be method to determine denudation rates from fine (50–100 μm) detrital quartz at the watershed scale. This method is used worldwide to determine denudation rates from sand grained sediments (250 μm–1 mm). We show that in the Var catchment, fine-grained sediments (50–100 μm) are suited to the ¹⁰Be method, which is vital for future applications of ¹⁰Be in sedimentary archives such as offshore sediments.

Scaling relationships describe mathematically how two geometric traits of a geomorphic feature change relative to each other in a systematic way: how length changes with area in drainage basins and sedimentary deposits, for example. Here we demonstrate the emergence of scaling relationships in coastal overwash morphology. These findings may help to predict overwash deposition, and offer insight into how spatial patterns in overwash morphology may self-organise.

Land's erosion creates sediment particles that are redistributed from mountains to oceans, under the action of climate, tectonics or human activities. But measuring the mass of redistributed sediment is difficult. Here we describe a new method combining gravity and photogrammetry measures, which allows us to weigh the mass of sediment redistributed by a landslide and a river in Taiwan from 2015 to 2017. Trying this method in other regions shall help to better understand erosion processes.

The topographic steady state assumption is often used in Geomorphology. However recent studies suggest that drainage network is more mobile than previously thought. Using landscape evolution models, we show that those migrations have a significant impact on basin-wide denudation rates even if an overall topographic steady state is achieved at large scale. Our approach provides new tools to derive minimal uncertainties in basin scale denudation rates due to this topographic disequilibrium.

Mountainous landscapes have long been recognized as potential drivers for genetic drift, speciation and ecological resilience. We present a novel approach that can be used to assess and quantify drivers of biodiversity, speciation and endemism over geological times. Using coupled climate-landscape models, we show that biodiversity under tectonic and climatic forcing relates to a first-order to landscape dynamic and that landscapes complexity drives species richness through the orogenic history.