Timescales of sediment dynamics, climate and topographic change in mountain landscapes (SedyMONT)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Matthias Hinderer
• Subject Area: Palaeontology
• Term: from 2008 to 2014
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 71063099

SedyMONT will identify the components of landscape forming processes that have adapted to ongoing climate change. This requires sediment sources and sinks to be identified and the mechanisms and rates of sediment transfer to be quantified at sites in different environments. In SedyMONT we propose to address this topic by (a) combining short-term monitoring of the contribution of climate-driven sediment fluxes to changes in landscape morphology with various sources of surface process data averaged over decadal to millennial scales, and by (b) interpreting the observations within a conceptual modelling framework for sediment production and transfer. The results will guide predictions of landscape response to climate change.The main objectives are tounderstand the timescales and mechanisms of sediment production and transfer and to identify their effects in selected European mountain landscapes,document changes in process rates over different timescales (thousands of years to modern) from various historical sources, including monitoring conducted during the project,analyze how the inheritance of the landscape (e.g., due to the influence of previous glaciations) has affected process rates,investigate how landscape connectivity affects sediment transfer rates and residence times, develop a conceptual modelling framework to understand the transfer of sediment from sources to sinks, analyse the frequency and magnitude of precipitation events in the study areas from observed data and regional climate model scenarios,develop time series and chronologies of erosion, sediment yield and landscape change in the study basins.Sites are selected based on their monitoring history, covering a range of representative mountainous settings across Europe spanning the whole range of processes and process interactions. Each site will be analyzed using modern geophysical, geochemical, geomorphic and remote sensing tools for time series and chronologies of landscape change, flux change, climate change, sediment sources and for inheritance.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Austria, Norway, Switzerland
• Participating Persons: Professor Dr. Achim A. Beylich; Professor Dr. Peter Molnar; Professor Dr.-Ing. Alexander Reiterer; Professor Dr. Fritz Schlunegger; Professor Dr. Lothar Schrott