Humans in the Earth System

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 October 2020) | Viewed by 3915

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA
Interests: human-environment interactions; land use; carbon; climate

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The evolution of the Earth system is governed by both natural and anthropogenic processes and their interactions. Environmental conditions provide opportunities and constraints for human activities that in turn change many aspects of the Earth system (including the conditions affecting human activity). Understanding such feedbacks is becoming extremely important as the impacts of both changing conditions and human activities are increasing in magnitude and spatial extent. Climate mitigation strategies are prominent examples of purposeful feedbacks in which humans attempt to change conditions in order to lessen negative impacts on human systems. While such strategies are widely discussed, most research and understanding is limited to either human or environmental systems, or to simple one-way effects of one system upon the other. Advancing human capacity for dealing with global change requires an integrated perspective with humans in the Earth system. This Special Issue aims to present cutting-edge research that can help us to understand feedbacks between humans and the environment by using approaches that integrate human and environmental systems, including modeling, observational, theoretical, and applied studies at local to global scales.

Dr. Alan V. Di Vittorio
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • human systems
  • environment
  • global change
  • socio-ecological
  • feedbacks
  • Earth system
  • carbon
  • climate
  • water

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

25 pages, 12074 KiB  
Article
Vegetation and Fluvial Geomorphology Dynamics after an Urban Fire
by Lauren E. H. Mathews and Alicia M. Kinoshita
Geosciences 2020, 10(8), 317; https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences10080317 - 16 Aug 2020
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3357
Abstract
The goal of this research was to characterize the impact of invasive riparian vegetation on burn severity patterns and fluvial topographic change in an urban Mediterranean riverine system (Med-sys) after fire in San Diego, California. We assessed standard post-fire metrics under urban conditions [...] Read more.
The goal of this research was to characterize the impact of invasive riparian vegetation on burn severity patterns and fluvial topographic change in an urban Mediterranean riverine system (Med-sys) after fire in San Diego, California. We assessed standard post-fire metrics under urban conditions with non-native vegetation and utilized field observations to quantify vegetation and fluvial geomorphic processes. Field observations noted both high vegetation loss in the riparian area and rapidly resprouting invasive grass species such as Arundo donax (Giant Reed) after fire. Satellite-based metrics that represent vegetation biomass underestimated the initial green canopy loss, as did volumetric data derived from three-dimensional terrestrial laser scanning data. Field measurements were limited to a small sample size but demonstrated that the absolute maximum topographic changes were highest in stands of Arundo donax (0.18 to 0.67 m). This work is the first quantification of geomorphic alterations promoted by non-native vegetation after fire and highlights potential grass–fire feedbacks that can contribute to geomorphic disruption. Our results support the need for ground-truthing or higher resolution when using standard satellite-based indices to assess post-fire conditions in urban open spaces, especially when productive invasive vegetation are present, and they also emphasize restoring urban waterways to native vegetation conditions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Humans in the Earth System)
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