Transient Landscapes and Relief Dynamics

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