Environmental Change, Geomorphological and Sedimentological Processes in Asian Hinterlands

Dear Colleagues,

The Asian hinterlands, which contain high mountains, large plateaus, plains, basins, vast deserts, big lakes, and river systems influenced by Westerlies and/or Monsoons, have the roughest landscapes in the world. The evolution of landforms, sediment environments, and land use practices in these regions are significantly impacted by climate change. Environmental reconstructions of the Asian hinterlands rely heavily on chronostratigraphic frameworks and geomorphological and sedimentological features. However, over the past decade, reconstructing and interpreting regional environmental changes in these regions has been controversial and challenging. The problems include the asynchronous responses of surface processes to environmental changes as reconstructed with different types of sediments and environmental proxies, the interactive influences of local and regional forces on the deposition and evolution of geomorphological and sedimentological units, the complexity of the influence of environmental change on human activities and ecological stability, and the reliability of chronological frameworks established using numerical dating techniques.

To address these challenges, this Research Topic focuses on new advances in the reconstruction of environments in the Asian hinterlands. Multiple approaches and techniques, including the adoption of new proxies to improve the interpretation of environmental changes, the integration of geomorphological and sedimentological records from multiple sites, the monitoring of geomorphological and sedimentological processes with the support of geographic information and landform analysis techniques, the revealing of regional environmental dynamics by numerical model simulations, and the establishment of robust chronostratigraphic frameworks with improved accuracy and precision, are useful for better understanding environmental change in the Asian hinterlands. The Research Topic welcomes original research and review articles on:

• Geomorphic processes and landscape changes;
• Sedimentological processes and environmental changes;
• Human–environment interaction, human evolution and activity, population pressure, ecological safety, and adaptation;
• New achievements and applications of numerical dating methods;
• New physical, chemical, and biological proxies in tracing sediment transportation and landscape change.

Dr. Jun Peng
Dr. Jingran Zhang
Dr. Yujie Guo
Prof. Dr. Guoqiang Li
Prof. Dr. Chongyi E
Dr. Xiangjun Liu
Topic Editors