New trends in Geomorphology – systems-based understanding of long term man-landscape interactions

LUCIFS is a constitutive part of PAGES Focus 5 “Past Ecosystem Processes and Human-Environment Interactions”. The LUCIFS research explores past to present responses of fl uvial systems to climate change and human activities. After 2000, the LUCIFS group organized a second major workshop open to all interested members of the research community. The workshop focused on man-environment interactions, particularly on geomorphological and sedimentological perspectives on midto long-term quantitative sediment fl uxes. The meeting was convened in Muenzenberg near Frankfurt, Germany from 11-14 May 2006. The LUCIFS leader, Richard Dikau (Univ. Bonn, Germany), and the local organizers, Peter Houben (Univ. Frankfurt, Germany), Lothar Schrott (Univ. Salzburg, Austria) and Jürgen Wunderlich (Univ. Frankfurt, Germany) were very pleased to welcome 41 participants from 5 continents and 14 countries (Fig. 1). The workshop provided a stimulating working atmosphere with high-profile talks. The tight schedule consisted of 19 oral and 11 poster presentations, of which 5 keynote talks considered the state of the art in various fi elds of man-environment research. All contributions were of outstanding quality and sparked animated discussions. The workshop program was supplemented by a pre-workshop fi eldtrip led by Peter Houben. During the fi eldtrip, the methodical approach and results of a Holocene sediment budget study for Rockenberg catchment were presented. One of the main messages there was that in this area, the spatial pattern of erosion and redeposition, the routing of sediments and the changes in rates of fl ux and delivery along the sediment cascade have been chiefl y controlled by human actions. On Saturday afternoon, small working groups elaborated on selected topics of Holocene humanenvironment interactions. The 4 thematic foci were: Systems-based understanding of earth surface change with respect to Holocene sediment fl ux. Evaluating quantitatively human impact on earth surface systems. Exploring the sedimentary record: cross-cutting approaches to catchment-scale sediment fl ux. Coupling changing pressures of anthropogenic and natural drivers with modeling approaches. Structured discussions helped to identify key issues for further rebe taken to curb human infl uence on the properties of the atmosphere. A parallel program was also scheduled for approx. 50 high school students. These students were taken to a local peat bog where they were given an introduction to palaeoclimatology, which included the coring of peat, lake and marine sediments. This fi eldtrip was followed by a “climate panel debate”, in which the students were given the opportunity to ask scientists at the GeoBiosphere Science Centre about past, present and future climates. Lund is located only 20 km from the recently opened Figure 1: A) Annual mean temperature change from 1971-2000 to 2081-2090, as averaged over 21 models forced with the SRES A1B emissions scenario. B) Estimated probability that temperature change exceeds zero. The relatively low probability in the northern North Atlantic is a result of models that simulate cooling due to changes in ocean circulation (Räisänen and Ruokolainen, 2006, Tellus A, 58). road-rail link to Copenhagen. It was, therefore, appropriate that the workshop ended with a visit to the Niels Bohr Institute to see the ice cores recovered from the Greenland ice sheet.