Researchers sifted through 50 years of satellite imagery and came up with new clues to where and why rivers avulse, suddenly changing their course.
landscape
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Steep Mountain Slopes Have Surprisingly Long Lifetimes
New models of eastern Tibetan hillsides show that steep slopes with “excess” rock last longer on average than their shallower counterparts.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Running Water on Topographic Data to Better Delineate Channels
Two-dimensional hydraulic simulations are a powerful tool to identify process domains such as channels, hillslopes, and floodplains in high-resolution topographic data.
Posted inScience Updates
A Sharper Look at the World’s Rivers and Catchments
Digital hydrographic maps have transformed global environmental studies and resource management. A major database update will provide even clearer and more complete views of Earth’s waterways.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Debris Flows Keep the Landscape on the Straight and Narrow
New methods for identifying debris flow-shaped channels improve hazard quantification and highlight how high uplift rates and fractured bedrock facilitate debris flow-dominated landscape evolution.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Moving Earthquake-Generated Sediment Through a Landscape
Ten years after the Wenchuan earthquake, most of the new sediment it produced remained on the landscape, indicating a long recovery time.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
What Caused the Open Habitat Transition in the West-Central U.S.?
Between 26-15 My ago, forests covering west-central North America gave way to open, grassy habitats. Now, oxygen isotope records suggest this shift is owed to drier winters and increased aridity.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Western U.S. “Megafloods” Might Not Have Been So Mega
The flooding that carved eastern Washington State 20,000 to 12,000 years ago could have been 80% smaller than the canyons’ volume today.
Posted inScience Updates
Making the Most of Volcanic Eruption Responses
Last year, a new collaborative initiative conducted a hypothetical volcano response exercise. A month later, they put the knowledge gained to use during an actual eruption.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
A New Model for Self-Organized Pattern Formation
Scale-dependent feedbacks in time, rather than in space, result in a new type of competition, explaining the regularly patterned landscape of Big Cypress National Preserve in South Florida.