Littoral landforms of Lake Hulun and Lake Buir (China and Mongolia): Wind-driven hydro-sedimentary dynamics and resulting clastics distribution

Two rectangular-shaped lakes, Lake Hulun and Lake Buir, located at the boundary between China and Mongolia, only c. 75 km apart and therefore experiencing similar wind fields, have been studied based on satellite images and field surveys in order to compare their geomorphological and sedimentological characteristics. The wind-driven...

Modelling mangrove-mudflat dynamics with a coupled individual-based-hydro-morphodynamic model

As climate-change-driven extremes potentially make coastal areas more vulnerable, mangroves can help sustainably protect the coasts. There is a substantial understanding of both mangrove dynamics and hydro-morphodynamic processes. However, the knowledge of complex eco-geomorphic interactions with physical-environmental stressors remains...

The geomorphology of an ebb-tidal-delta linked to benthic species distribution and functionality

As a response to climate change and sea-level rise, new nourishment strategies for low-lying sandy coasts are developed. These interventions affect the habitat quality of coastal ecosystems for benthic communities. Unraveling the relationship between benthic fauna and their environment facilitates the design of sustainable management...

Dryland avulsion sequences: Insights from data-model comparison of a terminal dryland river system

An advection–diffusion model of fluvial processes was used to analyze the stratigraphic expression of avulsions in terminal river systems and understand their control on basin-fill architecture. The initial and boundary conditions of the model runs (i.e., catchment area, smoothed initial topographic surface, grain-size distribution and...

Novel sediment sampling method provides new insights into vertical grain size variability due to marine and aeolian beach processes

In sandy beach systems, the aeolian sediment transport can be governed by the vertical structure of the sediment layers at the bed surface. Here, data collected with a newly developed sand scraper is presented to determine high-resolution vertical grain size variability and how it is affected by marine and aeolian processes. Sediment samples...

Clay-plug sediment as the locus of arsenic pollution in Holocene alluvial-plain aquifers

Shallow aquifers in many Holocene alluvial basins around the world have in the last three decades been identified as arsenic pollution hotspots, in which the spatial variation of natural (or: geogenic) arsenic concentration is conditioned by the meandering-river geomorphology and the fluvial lithofacies distribution. Despite the large amount of...

Satellite image processing for the coarse-scale investigation of sandy coastal areas

In recent years, satellite imagery has shown its potential to support the sustainable management of land, water, and natural resources. In particular, it can provide key information about the properties and behavior of sandy beaches and the surrounding vegetation, improving the ecomor-phological understanding and modeling of coastal dynamics....

Spatial variation pattern analysis of hydrologic processes and water quality in three gorges reservoir area

The Three Gorges Project (TGP) has greatly enhanced the heterogeneity of the underlying surface in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area (TGRA), thereby affecting the hydrologic processes and water quality. However, the influence of the differences of underlying surfaces on the hydrologic processes and water quality in the TGRA has not been studied...

Trigger characteristics of torrential flows from high to low alpine regions in Austria

Torrential processes like fluvial flows (flash floods with or without intensive sediment transport) and debris flows can represent a threat to people and infrastructure in alpine domains. Up to now the hydro-meteorological trigger conditions and their connection with geomorphic watershed characteristics that favor the initiation of either...

Applying independent component analysis on sentinel-2 imagery to characterize geomorphological responses to an extreme flood event near the non-vegetated Río Colorado terminus, Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia

In some internally-draining dryland basins, ephemeral river systems terminate at the margins of playas. Extreme floods can exert significant geomorphological impacts on the lower reaches of these river systems and the playas, including causing changes to flood extent, channel-floodplain morphology, and sediment dispersal. However, the...

MIS 5e relative sea-level changes in the Mediterranean Sea: Contribution of isostatic disequilibrium

Sea-level indicators dated to the Last Interglacial, or Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5e, have a twofold value. First, they can be used to constrain the melting of Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets in response to global warming scenarios. Second, they can be used to calculate the vertical crustal rates at active margins. For both applications,...

Eco-morphological problems in the Yangtze estuary and the Western Scheldt

This paper compares the Yangtze Estuary in China and the Western Scheldt Estuary in The Netherlands by their morphodynamic and ecological systems, their engineering works and estuarine management issues, and the major challenges in studying them. Physically speaking, the two estuaries are very different. The Yangtze Estuary is much larger and...

Bed composition generation for morphodynamic modeling: Case study of San Pablo Bay in California, USA

Applications of process-based morphodynamic models are often constrained by limited availability of data on bed composition, which may have a considerable impact on the modeled morphodynamic development. One may even distinguish a period of “morphodynamic spin-up” in which the model generates the bed level according to some ill-defined initial...