Special External Effects on Fluvial System Evolution

Dear Colleagues,

Rivers are excellent witnesses of the dynamics affecting the Earth’s surface environments. They are highly sensitive to climate change, base-level change, tectonic movements and human influence. In addition, the complexity of this external forcing to fluvial dynamics has to be supplemented with internal mechanisms. Fortunately, rivers are reliable recorders of these dynamics via their sedimentary products and morphological expression, which may be considered as fluvial archives.

Until now there was a focus on evaluating the general impacts of individual external factors. However, specific environmental characteristics of these factors have been shown to be increasingly important by recent case studies. For example, the effects of regional climate, differentiated topography and vegetation, and frozen ground appears to play an essential role in the evolution of the fluvial system. Integration of such environmental conditions in the processes that were active within the complex fluvial system will open new perspectives in the progressive understanding of the evolution of landscape form, ecology, sediment fluxes and hydrology of the system, within the framework of external drivers, such as tectonics, general climate and human activity. This is an appealing challenge that we want to address in the present Special Issue under the aegis of the Fluvial Archives Group (FLAG) under the title “Special External Effects on Fluvial System Evolution”.

Prof. Jef Vandenberghe
Prof. David R. Bridgland
Dr. Xianyan Wang
Guest Editors