Landscapes Live

EGU-GM Online Seminars in Geomorphology

Landscapes Live is a weekly online seminar series freely accessible to the international scientific community interested in various aspects of geomorphology. Our talks take place on Zoom every Thursday, starting at 4pm time of Paris/Berlin/Amsterdam. Check your local time here.

Landscapes Live is affiliated to the Geomorphology (GM) division of EGU and contribute to develop its virtual activities. Indeed, EGU is pioneering a new CampFire concept to bring together the geoscience community in between General Assemblies. We hope that this helps us in our transition to a greener future and ensure that our community better serve the needs of all scientists regardless of international mobility.

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Landscapes Live organization team

Landscapes Live Pacific seminar series

Seminar schedule for Spring 2025

Thursday, 13 March 2025 at 16:00 CET

Paul Bierman (University of Vermont, USA)

A landscape under the ice: Camp Century, Greenland

In northwest Greenland, frozen beneath more than 1300 meters of ice, lies a frozen landscape. In 1966, US Army drillers working at Camp Century, the nuclear-powered base inside the ice sheet, completed the world’s first deep ice core. They kept drilling and recovered 3.44 meters of frozen sub-glacial material––ice and sediment.

This archive was stored frozen in the US and Denmark for almost 60 years and little studied. Since 2019, an international team, supported in part by the US NSF, has been analyzing this material. Based on research I did for my 2024 book, When the Ice is Gone, I will explain how and why the US Army came to drill a nearly mile-long ice core in Greenland. I will then synthesize a variety of new data to describe processes that formed and transformed this under-ice landscape.

CT scans and physical properties of the sediment show a landscape shaped by ice (till) and then by gravity flows and moving water (bedded sand). Geochronology tells us the till was deposited at some time between 1.4 and 3.2 Mya; geochemical analysis of porewater and SEM microanalysis of grain coatings indicate that the till was deeply weathered, but in situ 10-Be demands that the surface was eroded and that weathering extended meters below it. When the ice melted ~400 kya (MIS 11 super interglacial), the permafrost softened, and the till slumped. It was reworked by flowing water before ice once again covered the site.

Thousands of preserved plant macrofossils, found throughout the core and representing several dozen taxa, reveal that tundra vegetation covered the site during both interglacial periods represented in the core material. The plant species present indicate a mosaic of ecological niches the result of geomorphic heterogeneity – low spots with standing water, xeric outcrops and bare soil, frequent disturbance, and soils with different pH.

Our work shows the potential for sub-ice cores to reveal the history of Arctic landscapes now covered in ice. That information will become increasingly relevant as global warming rapidly changes the Earth’s glaciated regions.

Zoom link: https://ucsb.zoom.us/meeting/register/6W7qQFD2RlWAW_TEYENm0g

Paul's website: https://www.paulbierman.net/

Thursday, 20 March 2025 at 16:00 CET

James Gearon (Indiana University Bloomington, USA)

How River Avulsion Works

River avulsion occurs when a river channel suddenly switches course. Avulsing rivers create new pathways on the floodplain and the associated flooding can profoundly affect society, with records of these disasters stretching back millennia into human history. River avulsions are thought to occur when the water column becomes perched above the floodplain or when the slope down the flanks of the channel provides a steeper descent than the existing river channel. I tested these classical ideas by quantifying the topography around avulsing rivers and show that these mechanisms, historically invoked separately, work together. Near coasts, rivers avulse when the slope away from the channel is steeper, not because they are perched. The opposite is true near mountain fronts; on fans, the alternative paths are similarly steep to the downstream path, so rivers avulse when they are perched above the surrounding landscape. I reconcile these findings and present a new theoretical framework that identifies which rivers are vulnerable to avulsion and predicts the path of an avulsing river. These first-order rules of avulsion suggest that avulsion risks are underestimated in many coastal environments and that probabilistic predictions of avulsion pathfinding can efficiently map hazards with minimal information. Applying these principles for risk assessment could particularly benefit the Global South, which is disproportionately affected by avulsions.

Zoom link:

Paul's website: https://sandfrom.space/

Thursday, 27 March 2025 at 16:00 CET

TBD

Thursday, 1 May 2025

See you at EGU!

Thursday, 28 November 2024 at 16:00 CET

Lindsay Schoenbohm (University of Toronto, Canada)

Rocks Matter: why it is important to consider lithologic resistance to erosion in landscape evolution

Talk is now on LL's Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwU2C26c4Nc

Thursday, 7 November 2024 at 16:00 CET

Victoria Milanez Fernandes (GFZ, Germany)

Pleistocene landscape evolution above the Patagonian Slab window

Talk is now on LL's Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCzNCwaOdrI

Thursday, 31 October 2024 at 16:00 CEST

Tancrède Leger (University of Lausanne, Switzerland)

A data-consistent model of the last glaciation in the Alps achieved with physics-driven AI

Talk is now on LL's Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZpbp5doAIk

Thursday, 24 October 2024 at 16:00 CEST

Aurélie Davranche (University of Helsinki, Finland; University of Angers, France)

From field to space: multisource data to show how a nature based management can help to cope for sea level rise in the Mediterranean area

Talk is now on LL's Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41Weju45g0w

Thursday, 17 October 2024 at 16:00 CEST

Gareth Roberts (Imperial College London, UK)

Embracing scale and erosional randomness to understand landscape evolution

Talk is now on LL's Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/duqckTHGtI4

Thursday, 10 October 2024 at 16:00 CEST

Jérôme Lavé (CNRS, CRPG Nancy, France)

Giant collapses of high Himalayan peaks and their implications on the Himalayan landscapes

Talk is now on LL's YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/1pE68ZXTJ1A

Thursday, 3 October 2024 at 16:00 CEST

Eric Barefoot (University of California Riverside, USA)

Experimental Constraints on the Morphology of Canyons Formed by Crater Overtopping

Talk is now on LL's YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/WPZamy_EyS8?feature=shared

Thursday, 6 June 2024 at 16:00 CEST

Nakul Deshpande (NC State University, USA)

The Perpetual Fragility of Creeping Hillslopes

Talk is now on LL's YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/JuRl9coHMIo

Thursday, 28 March 2024 at 16:00 CET

Katy Burrows (ESA)

Resolving the impacts of earthquakes, storms, and prolonged rainfall on shallow landsliding

Talk is now on LL's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72yxOMXzfNs

Thursday, 4 April 2024 at 16:00 CEST

Albert Cabré (GET, Geoscience Environment Toulouse, France)

Geomorphic work of recent episodic rainstorm events in arid landscapes: examples from the Atacama Desert

Talk is now on LL's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKF473Pv1No

Thursday, 11 April 2024 at 16:00 CEST

Scott Jess (Washington State University, USA)

The ups and downs of extensional tectonics

Talk is now on LL's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQQFXh5aYIw

Thursday, 2 May 2024 at 16:00 CEST

Danica Roth (Colorado School of Mines, USA)

Unveiling nonlocal landscape dynamics: exploring hillslope processes beyond the diffusive paradigm

Talk is now on LL's YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/VJcZBe6thqQ

Thursday, 9 May 2024 at 16:00 CEST

Sam Woor (University of British Columbia & University of the Fraser Valley, Canada)

Illuminating landscape responses to Quaternary climate change with luminescence

Talk is now on LL's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDmnPb-FiLA

Thursday, 16 May 2024 at 16:00 CEST

Virginia Ruiz-Villanueva (University of Lausanne & University of Bern, Switzerland)

Quantifying and monitoring instream large wood supply and transfer in rivers

Talk is now on LL's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38oT5MwHgX4

Thursday, 23 May 2024 at 16:00 CEST

Claire Masteller (Washington University in St. Louis, USA)

Wiggles in width: Insights into alluvial channel dynamics from variability in high-resolution downstream hydraulic geometry

Talk is now on LL's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMizP1choAE