Planetary surfaces are shaped by both wind and water, and their resulting surface features are commonly observed by aerial images. Deep Springs playa, CA, provides a comparable wet-to-dry-transitioning landscape as experienced in Mars' past. Our results, made through collected weather data and drone footage, show that some features, when observed solely by aerial imagery, might be interpreted as being formed by wind when in fact other processes were more influential in their formation.

Straw checkerboard barriers (SCBs) have been widely used in anti-desertification projects. However, research on this mechanism and its laying length are still lacking. The significance of our work is to analyze some results, which seem simple but lack a theoretical basis from the perspective of turbulence through this model. This study may provide theoretical support for the minimum laying length of SCBs in anti-desertification projects.

We present new tools in the landscape evolution model Badlands to simulate ¹⁰Be production, erosion and transport. These tools are applied to a source-to-sink system in the SW French Alps, where the model is calibrated. We propose a model that fits river incision rates and ¹⁰Be concentrations in sediments, and we show that ¹⁰Be in deep marine sediments is a signal with multiple contributions that cannot be easily interpreted in terms of climate forcing.

The geomorphic activity of LIA lateral moraines is of high interest due to its implications for the sediment fluxes and hazards within proglacial areas. We derived multitemporal models from historical aerial images and recent drone images to investigate the morphodynamics on moraine slopes over time. We found that the highest erosion rates occur on the steepest moraine slopes, which stay active for decades, and that the slope angle explains morphodynamics better than the time since deglaciation.

In cold regions of the Earth, thawing permafrost can change the landscape, impact ecosystems, and lead to the release of greenhouse gases. In this study we used many observational tools to better understand how sediment moves on permafrost hillslopes. Some topographic change conforms to our understanding of slope stability and sediment transport as developed in temperate landscapes, but much of what we observed needs further explanation by permafrost-specific geomorphic models.

We compile data on carbonate denudation, the sum of mechanical erosion and chemical weathering, from cosmogenic nuclides and use them in conjunction with weathering data to constrain the partitioning of denudation into erosion and weathering. We show how carbonate erosion and weathering respond to different climatic and tectonic conditions and find that variations in denudation partitioning can be used to explain the vastly different morphology of carbonate landscapes on Earth.

Arctic river deltas influence how nutrients and soil organic carbon, carried by sediments from the Arctic landscape, are retained or released into the Arctic Ocean. Under climate change, the deltas themselves and their ecosystems are becoming more vulnerable. We build upon previous models to reproduce for the first time an important feature ubiquitous to Arctic deltas and simulate its future under climate warming. This can impact the future of Arctic deltas and the carbon release they moderate.

We analyzed more than 440 000 measurements from suspended sediment monitoring to show that suspended sediment concentration (SSC) in large rivers in Germany strongly declined by 50 % between 1990 and 2010. We argue that SSC is approaching the natural base level that was reached during the mid-Holocene. There is no simple explanation for this decline, but increased sediment retention in upstream headwaters is presumably the major reason for declining SSC in the large river channels studied.

We explored the ways that boulders and bedrock affect the shapes of hills and valleys by testing how quickly they erode compared to soil. We found that bedrock and boulders mostly erode more slowly than soil and predict that fracture patterns affect where they exist. We also found that streams generally follow fault orientations. Together, our data imply that fractures influence landscapes by weakening bedrock, causing it to erode faster and to eventually form a valley where a stream may flow.

Predicting the extent and thickness of debris flow deposits is important for assessing and mitigating hazards. We propose a simplified mass balance model for predicting the morphology of terminated debris flows depositing over complex topography. A key element in this model is that the termination of flow of the deposit is determined by prescribed values of yield stress and friction angle. The model results are consistent with available analytical solutions and field and laboratory observations.