Landscape responses to geomorphic processes at different spatial and temporal scales : Towards analysing process-response systems in geomorphology

Kurzfassung/Abstract

The process-response concept describes feedbacks between cascading and morphological systems, that is, how landforms and landscapes react in response to geomorphic processes, and how these processes change in response to changing landforms and landscapes. Processes include, for example, mass movements, topsoil erosion, fluvial dynamics and eolian processes. They affect landscapes at a range of spatial and temporal scales, providing exciting opportunities to study these process-response systems under both an “archive” and a “process” perspective.
Some of the papers of this volume describe quaternary-scale investigations of sedimentary archives (environmental changes and palaeoclimatic dynamics recorded in sediment cores), and include a geoarchaeological study combined with seismic and geoelectric measurements. Two papers attempt to quantify present-day morphodynamics by studying the influence of rock mass properties and the time passed since deglaciation on small magnitude rockfalls, and by using terrestrial LiDAR surveys and field experiments to determine and model seasonal variation and the spatial patterns of erosion on steep, unvegetated slopes.
The six selected, peer reviewed papers were first presented at the 2013 annual conference of the German Geomorphologists working group, held at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt.