Transient Landscapes and Relief Dynamics

A special issue of Geosciences (ISSN 2076-3263).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 February 2021) | Viewed by 3119

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Institut des Sciences de la Terre Paris (iSTeP), Sorbonne Université, 75005 Paris, France
Interests: geomorphology; earth surface processes; tectonics; orogenic building and landscape evolution; river long profiles

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Guest Editor
Departamento de Investigación y Prospectiva Geocientífica, Instituto Geológico y Minero de España (IGME), 28003 Madrid, Spain
Interests: geomorphology; earth surface processes; tectonics; interactions tectonics erosion sedimentation; source-2-sink; experimental modeling

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The purpose of this Special Issue of Geosciences is to provide original research articles in the field of geomorphology, earth surface processes, and climate–tectonic interactions focused on transient landforms and transient stages of landscapes.

The Earth’s topography results from the interaction between deep tectonic processes and erosional processes, which theoretically evolve toward a so-called “steady state” stage when tectonic uplift is balanced by erosion. One of the current challenges in geomorphology is to characterize the “transient landscapes” from the steady state ones and interpret their origin. Numerous recent studies have shown that transient stages represent some large, and sometimes unsuspected, periods of the evolution of the Earth's topography. However, the complexity of the relationships between the uplift processes and the erosional response of the geomorphic systems which operate at different timescales (104 to 106 years) and length scales (1-1000’s km including fluvial, hillslope, or colluvial scales) does not easily allow one to extract the relative impact of tectonics, climate, and biology from landforms and their erosional products.What are the response times of the geomorphic systems? Can we estimate the nature, magnitude, and timing of forcing parameters? What are the couplings and feedback mechanisms between surface erosion, climate, and tectonic processes? The answer to these questions can be found in innovative works including detailed interpretations of modern geomorphic parameters coupled with modeling and/or analytic approaches. A case-by-case basis is expected to allow to distinguish among surface uplift and climate influence on transient landscapes. These case studies can give important constraints on the spatiotemporal evolution of past and active tectonics, and on the response of geomorphic systems following major climate changes.

Authors are invited to submit their work focusing on the following topics:

-Geomorphological or geological field studies possibly combined with SIG maps and geobrowser tools;

-Transient river long profiles and knickpoint migration analyses linked to base-level changes or active tectonic areas;

-Response time, drainage network dynamics, and the interplay between fluvial, hillslope, and mass movement processes associated with transient landscapes;

-Numerical/experimental modeling of landscapes;

-Mid- to long-term erosional budget and associated topographic evolution constrained by thermochronology, cosmogenic isotopes, optically stimulated or infrared stimulated luminescence, paleoelevation data and other analytic approaches.

Dr. Nicolas Loget
Dr. Julien Babault
Guest Editors


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Keywords

  • transient landscapes
  • erosion
  • tectonics
  • mountain building
  • earth surface processes
  • river long profiles
  • fluvial knickpoints
  • erosional response time
  • drainage network dynamics

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

23 pages, 12812 KiB  
Article
Morphotectonic Evolution of an Alluvial Fan: Results of a Joint Analog and Numerical Modeling Approach
by Clément Garcia-Estève, Yannick Caniven, Rodolphe Cattin, Stéphane Dominguez and Romain Sylvain
Geosciences 2021, 11(10), 412; https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences11100412 - 1 Oct 2021
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2438
Abstract
Surface topography results from complex couplings and feedbacks between tectonics and surface processes. We combine analog and numerical modeling, sharing similar geometry and boundary conditions, to assess the topographic evolution of an alluvial fan crossed by an active thrust fault. This joint approach [...] Read more.
Surface topography results from complex couplings and feedbacks between tectonics and surface processes. We combine analog and numerical modeling, sharing similar geometry and boundary conditions, to assess the topographic evolution of an alluvial fan crossed by an active thrust fault. This joint approach allows the calibration of critical parameters constraining the river deposition–incision laws, such as the settling velocity of suspended sediments, the bed-rock erodibility, or the slope exponent. Comparing analog and numerical models reveals a slope-dependent threshold process, where a critical slope of ca. 0.081 controls the temporal evolution of the drainage network. We only evidence minor topographic differences between stable and stick-slip fault behavior localized along the fault scarp. Although this topographic signature may increase with the slip rate and the return period of slip events, it remains slight compared to the cumulated displacement along the fault scarp. Our results demonstrate that the study of morphology cannot be used alone to study the slip mode of active faults but can be a valuable tool complementing stratigraphic and geodetic observations. In contrast, we underline the significant signature of the distance between the fault and the sediment source, which controls the degree of channels incision and the density of the drainage network. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Transient Landscapes and Relief Dynamics)
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