This research examined the influence of low- to mid-latitude mountain deglaciation on the channel pattern of proglacial rivers and evaluated the suitability of the Badlands Landscape Evolution Model to simulate glacial thinning, retreat, and runoff. Glacier types and scenarios were constructed based on size, mass turnover, and climate projections. Seasonal precipitation maps were derived from runoff projections to represent meltwater production and rainfall and inputted into Badlands. Glacier thinning was modelled using a modified stream power law, enforcing a linear dependence of erosion on precipitation. Modelled proglacial discharge was used to determine the dominant channel pattern. The results show that annual glacial runoff will slightly increase in the short term, leading to a minor and largely insignificant increase in river braiding. Over time, runoff will decline to slightly below initial levels, resulting in a similarly insignificant reduction in braiding. Seasonal patterns will shift, with runoff decreasing in summer and autumn and increasing in winter and spring due to rainfall replacing snowfall. Runoff was found to be strongly dependent on glacier size, moderately dependent on mass
turnover, and only marginally affected by climate scenario. The fluvial pattern was found to be braided in almost all cases. Only low mass turnover glaciers in arid climates may experience minor downstream changes in channel pattern, depending on the extent of current glaciation. At present, Badlands is unable to model glacier dynamics efficiently due to computational limitations and the lack of mass balance, glacial erosion, and sliding laws. Furthermore, it only models glacial thinning and does not directly convert ice mass loss into runoff. Nevertheless, the model provides a strong foundation for implementing glacial features such as elevation-dependent melting and ice-to-runoff conversion.

Sediments play a crucial role in civil engineering branches like delta and river flood risk management and in maintaining natural ecosystems. Changes in the availability of sediment can have a major impact on all of these. It is therefore crucial to understand how sediment load in a source-to-sink system behaves in changing environments. Studies quantifying these behaviors often do not span further than a few decades to a hundred years. Carbon emissions will likely have an effect on our climate on the much larger scale of millennia. Humans have begun to plan and adapt their behavior to mitigate climate change by way of greenification of urban areas and replacing traditional agricultural practices by more sustainable alternatives. This study looks at the influence of climate change and different anthropogenic land use changes on the sediment load of the river Rhine by integrating tectonics, sea-level and precipitation change, and land use change for the coming 10,000 years using Badlands. This is done by utilizing a scenario-based approach. The essential role of topsoil dynamics, and a lack thereof in traditional landscape evolution models, such as Badlands, was identified. Using a general scale of topsoil and bedrock erodibilities calibrated to produce realistic sediment load in the Rhine, we found that any implementation of more sustainable land use like agroforestry is predicted to decrease the sediment load of the Rhine in most climate change scenarios, agreeing with similar studies that focused on short-term modeling. Implementing non-uniform precipitation change resulted in significantly different outcomes than using a uniform approximation, so it is advised to implement region-based precipitation change. Furthermore, Badlands has shown impressive versatility and adaptability, and shows potential to be used for the growing demand of studies that focus on predicting future influences of different processes in light of climate change using a holistic process-based approach.