We use a climate model and statistics to provide an overview of regional climates from different times in the Late Cenozoic. We focus on mountain ranges in particular and identify potential hotspots for erosion. Our results highlight significant changes in climates throughout the Late Cenozoic, which should be taken into consideration when interpreting erosion rates. We also document regions with the highest potential for future observational studies of the impact of climate change on erosion. Hide

River profiles derived from digital elevation models are affected by errors. Here we present two new algorithms – quantile carving and the CRS algorithm – to hydrologically correct river profiles. Both algorithms preserve the downstream decreasing shape of river profiles while CRS additionally smooths profiles to avoid artificial steps. Our algorithms are able to cope with the problems of overestimation and asymmetric error distributions. Hide

Global climate warming causes permafrost to warm and thaw, and, consequently, to release the carbon into the atmosphere. Terrestrial laser scanning is evaluated and current methods are extended in the context of monitoring subsidence in Arctic permafrost regions. The extracted information is important to gain a deeper understanding of permafrost-related subsidence processes and provides highly accurate ground-truth data which is necessary for further developing area-wide monitoring methods. Hide

Bedrock channels are a key component of mountaineous landscapes. Here, a new model of the steady state morphology, including channel width, slope and sinuosity, is derived from process physics considerations. The model compares favourably to observed scaling relations. Hide

We present a method to analyse surface change using 3D data collected at an hourly frequency. This is applied to a failing rockslope over 10 months. A higher proportion (and frequency) of small rockfall is observed than in less-frequent (e.g. monthly) monitoring. This has implications for our understanding of failure mechanisms and hazard return intervals. However, quantifying longer-term erosion rates may be more suited to less frequent data collection, which contains lower accumulative errors. Hide

Sediment produced by glaciers are transported by rivers and wind toward the ocean. During their journey, these sediments are weathered, and all together we know that this has an impact on climate. One key factor is time, but the duration of this journey is largely unknown. We were able here to measure the average time that sediment spend only in the glacial area. This time is 100–200 kyr, which is long and allow lot of processes to act on those sediments during their journey. Hide

The importance of increasing the degree of automation in the context of monitoring natural hazards or geological phenomena is apparent. A vital step in the processing chain of monitoring deformations is the transformation of captured epochs into a common reference systems. This lead to the motivation to develop an algorithm that realibly carries out this task. The algorithm was tested on three different geomorphic events while the results were quite satisfactory. Hide

We present a new method to interpret a type of data that geologists obtained by dating minerals in river sand samples. We show that such data contains information about the spatial distribution of erosion rate (wear of surface rocks by natural processes such as river incision, land sliding or weathering) in the regions neighboring the river. This is important to understand the nature and efficiency of the processes responsible for surface erosion in mountain belts. Hide

We develop a model of annual probability of shallow landslide initiation triggered by soil water from a hydrologic model. Our physically-based model accommodates data uncertainty using a Monte Carlo approach. We found elevation-dependent patterns in probability related to the stabilizing effect of forests and soil and slope limitation at high elevations. We demonstrate our model in Washington, U.S.A., but it is designed to run elsewhere with available data for risk planning using the Landlab. Hide

A reconstruction of erosion in the Core Monsoon Zone of India provides unintuitive but fundamental insights: in contrast to semiarid regions that experience enhanced erosion during erratic rain events, the monsoon is annual and acts as a veritable erosional pump accelerating when the landcover is minimal. The existence of such a monsoon erosional pump promises to reconcile conflicting views on the land-sea sediment and carbon transfer as well as the monsoon evolution at longer timescales. Hide

The layer known as the critical zone extends from tree top to groundwater. This zone varies globally as a function of land use, climate, and geology. Energy and materials input from the land surface downward impact the subsurface landscape of water, gas, weathered material, and biota – at the same time that differences at depth also impact the surficial landscape. Scientists are designing observatories to understand the critical zone and how it will evolve into the future. Hide

When using cosmogenic nuclides to determine exposure ages or denudation rates in rapidly evolving landscapes, challenges arise related to the small number of nuclides that have accumulated in surface materials. Here we describe an approach that defines a lower threshold above which samples with low ¹⁰Be content can be statistically distinguished from laboratory blanks. This in turn dictates the meaning and reliability of the samples and their possible use. Hide

The simple use of time-lapse cameras as a visual observation tool may already be a great help for environmental investigations. However, beyond that, they have the potential to also deliver precise measurements with high temporal and spatial resolution when applying appropriate processing techniques. In this paper we introduce a method for the determination of glacier motion fields from time-lapse images but it might also be adapted to other environmental motion analysis tasks. Hide

We demonstrate that world’s largest beach-ridge plain in southern Mexico was formed under ample long-term fluvial sediment supply. Beach-ridge elevation is strongly influenced by aeolian accretion during the time the ridge is located next to the beach. Beach-ridge elevation is negatively correlated with progradation rate, which we relate to the variability in sediment supply to the coastal zone, reflecting decadal-scale precipitation changes within the river catchment. Hide