Decades of scientific research on the European Alps have helped quantify vast array processes that shape Earth’s surface. Patterns in rock exhumation, surface erosion and topographic changes can be compared to sediment yields preserved sedimentary basins or collected from modern rivers. Erosion-driven isostatic uplift explains up ~50% geodetic rates; remaining reveals importance internal (tecto...

Water that pressurizes the base of glaciers and ice sheets enhances glacier velocities and modulates glacial erosion. Predicting ice flow and erosion therefore requires knowledge of subglacial channel evolution, which remains observationally limited. Here we demonstrate that detailed analysis of seismic ground motion caused by subglacial water flow at Mendenhall Glacier (Alaska) allows for cont...

Depressions in landscapes function as buffers for water and sediment. A landscape with depressions has less runoff, less erosion and more sedimentation than a landscape without depressions. Sinks in digital elevation models (DEMs) can be existing features that correctly represent depressions in actual landscapes or spurious features that result from errors in DEM creation. In many erosion, land...

on which water ice has been positively identified. It is unlikely to be pure, although the nature, amount, and We examine various mechanisms of erosion on Titan and their likely effect on Titan’s geomorphology. Specifically we distribution of the contaminants (silicates, organics, and evaluate the solubility of likely crustal ices (water and ammoperhaps ammonia–water ice) are not known, but see...

Extreme flood events have the potential to cause catastrophic landscape change in short periods of time (10(0) to 10(3) h). However, their impacts are rarely considered in studies of long-term landscape evolution (>10(3) y), because the mechanisms of erosion during such floods are poorly constrained. Here we use topographic analysis and cosmogenic (3)He surface exposure dating of fluvially scul...

In this work we present the results of a new analytical model that examines the coupling between glacial erosion and orogen development. Surface processes are assumed to be glacially dominated, and tectonic activity is controlled by critical wedge mechanics. In these circumstances, we find that orogen width is strongly dependent on both the rate of accretion and on the rate of precipitation. Th...

The Himalayan and Tibetan highlands (mountains), with high rates of physical erosion, are extreme settings for earth surface processes, generating one the largest recent terrigenous detritus organic carbon discharges to ocean. However, their significance respect global climate cycles during Quaternary is still unclear, especially in quantitative terms. Here, we present comprehensive records con...

Glacial Lake Missoula formed when the Purcell Trench lobe of the Cordilleran ice sheet dammed Clark Fork River in Montana during the Fraser Glaciation (marine oxygen isotope stage 2). Over a period of several thousand years, the lake repeatedly filled and drained through its ice dam, and floodwaters coursed across the landscape in eastern Washington. In this paper, we describe the stratigraphy ...

One of the hypothesized effects large igneous provinces (LIPs) is planetary cooling on million-year timescales associated with enhanced silicate weathering freshly-emplaced basalt. This study combines reconstructions original surface extent and emplacement ages LIPs, a paleogeographic model, parameterization LIP erosion to estimate area in all latitudinal bands through Phanerozoic. analysis rev...