The next “Landscapes Live” online seminar will be held by Roman DiBiase (Penn State University) on Thursday 18th March at 3 pm GMT. Roman will speak on “Morphodynamics of mixed soil-mantled and bare bedrock hillslopes”. Register at https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcodO-spzMqH9NvjUM9oPstn4nPRc5avxDs. Previous talks are available on the website (https://osur.univ-rennes1.fr/LandscapesLive/).
Abstract: Mountainous landscapes often consist of a mix of soil-mantled and bare-bedrock hillslopes that can be patchy in both space and time, with consequences for chemical weathering, sediment delivery to river networks, and hazards. Existing models developed for soil-mantled landscapes are poorly suited to explain the transition to bedrock hillslopes that emerges due to either short-term (e.g. wildfire) or long-term (e.g., tectonic) drivers of imbalance between soil production and erosion. In this talk, I will present a framework for the morphodynamics of hillslopes that are a patchwork of soil cover and bare bedrock, and discuss implications for lithologic controls on landscape evolution and the prediction of post-wildfire debris flows in steep landscapes.