Earth Surface Processes and Landforms最新文献

{"title":"Multi-decadal gravel beach dynamics in the United Kingdom and Ireland: Insights from satellite-derived shorelines","authors":"Aikaterini Konstantinou,&nbsp;Tim Scott,&nbsp;Gerd Masselink,&nbsp;Christopher Stokes,&nbsp;Tom Hamilton,&nbsp;Bruno Castelle","doi":"10.1002/esp.70160","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/esp.70160","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Gravel beach systems provide vital protection from coastal flooding and erosion. They are highly dynamic and exhibit complex responses to hydrodynamic forcing over a range of temporal (hourly centennial) and spatial scales (m to km). Yet gravel beach evolution, particularly at interannual to decadal scales, across the spectrum of coastal settings, remains poorly understood. We use four decades of Satellite-Derived Shoreline (SDS) data to explore the morphodynamic behaviour of 45 selected gravel beach systems around the United Kingdom and Ireland. We apply a site-specific SDS extraction methodology and derive shoreline trends along 1554 shore-normal transects. Our findings indicate significant variability in decadal trends between sites ranging from 0.60 m/year retreat to 2.24 m/year progradation, with 36% of sites showing significant long-term trends over the study period. Nesses and spits were by far the most dynamic systems exhibiting the largest changes at transect level (from 4.73 m/year retreat to 10.5 m/year progradation), and the most significant changes in planform shape, while most constrained and unconstrained sites remained stable. We classify the observed behaviours, providing a first inventory of morphodynamic behaviours across different gravel beach systems in the United Kingdom and Ireland. We find that leading regional winter-averaged atmospheric indices provide some insight into planform behaviour over the entire domain, with 16 sites (35.6%) showing at least moderate (<i>R</i> ≥ 0.4) statistically significant correlations (<i>p</i> ≤ 0.05). Our results provide a deeper understanding of the long-term behaviour of gravel beach systems that can inform more effective coastal management strategies.</p>","PeriodicalId":11408,"journal":{"name":"Earth Surface Processes and Landforms","volume":"50 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/esp.70160","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145101746","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Hyperspectral imaging of river bathymetry using an ensemble of regression trees","authors":"Carl J. Legleiter,&nbsp;Paul J. Kinzel,&nbsp;Brandon T. Overstreet,&nbsp;Lee R. Harrison","doi":"10.1002/esp.70155","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/esp.70155","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Remote sensing has emerged as an effective tool for characterizing river systems, and machine learning (ML) techniques could make this approach even more powerful. To explore this possibility, we developed an ML-based workflow for hyperspectral imaging of river bathymetry using an ensemble of regression trees (HIRBERT). This approach involves using paired observations of depth and reflectance to select wavelength bands as predictors and then train a depth retrieval model; applying the model to the image yields a spatially continuous bathymetric map. We used data from five rivers with diverse morphologies and optical characteristics to assess whether HIRBERT can (1) provide more accurate depth estimates than a band ratio-based algorithm and (2) extend the range of depths detectable via remote sensing. Relative to single band combinations identified via optimal band ratio analysis (OBRA), regression tree ensembles improved depth retrieval performance, with observed versus predicted (OP) regression <span></span><math>\u0000 <semantics>\u0000 <mrow>\u0000 <msup>\u0000 <mi>R</mi>\u0000 <mn>2</mn>\u0000 </msup>\u0000 </mrow>\u0000 <annotation>$$ {R}^2 $$</annotation>\u0000 </semantics></math> values increasing for all five sites. Similarly, HIRBERT provided more reliable depth estimates than OBRA over the full range of depths present along each river. These results suggest that by incorporating additional spectral information from multiple wavelength bands, ML could enhance bathymetric mapping across a range of river environments. In addition, we show how graphical tools can facilitate interpretation of ML-based depth retrieval models and yield insight regarding relationships between depth and reflectance. The HIRBERT workflow is packaged in free, standalone software developed to support applications in river research and management. Although ML can enhance remote sensing of river bathymetry, the limitations of this approach must also be acknowledged: Field measurements of water depth are required to train a depth retrieval model and the resulting model should only be applied to the image from which the training data were derived. The inherently image-specific nature of this approach implies that developing generalized regression tree ensembles that could be applied at larger scales would require additional research.</p>","PeriodicalId":11408,"journal":{"name":"Earth Surface Processes and Landforms","volume":"50 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145057818","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Palimpsest subglacial meltwater corridors of the last cordilleran ice sheet: Geomorphology, stratigraphy and insights into subglacial meltwater dynamics during deglaciation","authors":"Alexander D. Sodeman,&nbsp;Tracy A. Brennand","doi":"10.1002/esp.70156","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/esp.70156","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Recent releases of high-resolution elevation data in British Columbia have revealed several previously unidentified meltwater-derived landforms associated with the last Cordilleran Ice Sheet (CIS). Prominent among these are small subglacial meltwater corridors (sSMCs): morphologically distinct channels up to 10s of km long that are eroded into glacial sediments, with varying intra-corridor landform assemblages. Intra-corridor landforms identified include curvilinear ridges, eskers and multi-ridged fans. The sSMCs are one or more orders of magnitude smaller than the previously described Chasm and Green Lake meltwater corridors, the latter two formed from an extremely large supraglacial lake outburst flood. Results from geomorphological, sedimentological and near-surface geophysical methods show that an erosional unconformity cut into the regional till sheet forms the base of each sSMC. This unconformity extends from the channel boundary and includes intra-corridor curvilinear ridges and erosional remnants, consistently topped by a 0.2–0.3 m thick concentration of cobbles. A discontinuous channel-wide fill (5–15 m thick) buries some curvilinear ridges and is sometimes capped by an intra-corridor esker. Multi-ridged fans occurring downflow from braided outwash plains postdate the sSMCs and all other intra-corridor landforms. We interpret the sSMCs as palimpsest landforms that developed over several melt seasons through the continuous reoccupation by subglacial meltwater flow (and later proglacial streams). Each trough found lateral to a curvilinear ridge represents an individual subglacial meltwater channel incised over one or more melt seasons. The broad corridor fill records higher-than-average melt season discharge within portions of the sSMC, burying or further eroding curvilinear ridges and potentially forming eskers during late-stage waning flows. Results from this study indicate that the last CIS had an active and dynamic subglacial drainage system during deglaciation.</p>","PeriodicalId":11408,"journal":{"name":"Earth Surface Processes and Landforms","volume":"50 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/esp.70156","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145038288","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Enhanced river planform analysis using deep learning and medial axis transform with Sentinel 1A imagery","authors":"Pawan Thapa,&nbsp;PT,&nbsp;Lisa Davis,&nbsp;LD,&nbsp;Amobichukwu Amanambu,&nbsp;AA,&nbsp;Matthew LaFevor,&nbsp;ML,&nbsp;Jonathan Frame,&nbsp;JF","doi":"10.1002/esp.70158","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/esp.70158","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Detecting river centrelines and estimating river water surface widths are valuable for measuring planform geometry. Extracting the river centreline and water surface width estimation from satellite images enables a better understanding of the river network dynamics and can be useful in predicting future changes. This study introduces a novel approach to detect river centrelines and water surface widths that leverages the powerful feature extraction capabilities of DeepLabV3, a state-of-the-art semantic segmentation model and integrates them with the geometric analysis strengths of the Medial Axis Transform (MAT). Our MAT approach identifies the midpoints of the river to detect the centreline. It calculates the distance from the centreline to the edge of the river and estimates the water surface width of the river. The effectiveness of this approach was validated through case studies of the Sipsey, Coosa, Tennessee and Mississippi Rivers. This approach utilizes Sentinel-1A Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery, enabling data acquisition independent of the weather conditions. We validated this approach using the National Hydrography Dataset Plus (NHDPlus) and in situ water surface width measurements from the HYDRoacoustic dataset in support of the Surface Water Oceanographic Topography (HYDRoSWOT) and cross-section width from the United States Geological Survey (USGS). The MAT approach accurately extracted centrelines and estimated water surface widths for the straight and meandering river sections. Quantitatively, the fine-tuned DeepLabV3 model achieved a 0.933 F1-score for water mask extraction, while the resulting centreline RMSEs against NHDPlus ranged from 0.55 m (Sipsey River) to 3.10 m (Mississippi River), and water surface width estimations generally varied by 2–15% from in-situ measurements. The accuracy of the method is high for straight and meandering rivers; however, errors, primarily caused by complex river morphology, increased in the Mississippi River because its braided channel system challenged the ability of MAT to define a consistent centreline and water surface width. However, it exhibited reduced accuracy and significant spatial deviations when applied to complex braided sections of the Mississippi River. This approach will significantly advance the field of planform geometry measurement by providing researchers with reliable, scalable and practical methodologies that can be used to develop robust and efficient tools.</p>","PeriodicalId":11408,"journal":{"name":"Earth Surface Processes and Landforms","volume":"50 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145037711","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Theoretical analysis and numerical simulation to characterize the nonlinear accelerated disaster process of rocky reservoir banks","authors":"Hao Huang,&nbsp;Wang Lu,&nbsp;Zhihua Zhang,&nbsp;Bolin Huang,&nbsp;Luqi Wang","doi":"10.1002/esp.70162","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/esp.70162","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Due to the particular morphology and complex environments in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area (TGRA), the dynamic failure process of rocky reservoir banks is difficult to quantify, especially the transition relationship between progressive deformation and sudden failure. In this context, the Guanmuling dangerous rock mass (GDRM) in the TGRA was taken as an example to study the evolution model of rocky reservoir banks. Combined with the indoor tests and field surveys, the damage evolution and the critical state of GDRM were determined through theoretical deduction. Afterwards, the mechanical parameters of the critical state were extracted, and the numerical calculation was used to analyse the dynamic collapse of the rocky reservoir banks. It can be found that the disintegration of the rocky reservoir banks was caused by the combined action of the bias pressure under the self-weight and the deterioration of the base rock. Moreover, the statistical analysis of the force bond fracture was used to characterize the evolution process of rocky reservoir banks, which can effectively reflect the nonlinear transformation stages. The related contents can provide a novel approach to quantifying the collapse process of unstable rocks in a complex mechanical environment.</p>","PeriodicalId":11408,"journal":{"name":"Earth Surface Processes and Landforms","volume":"50 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145037709","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Alluvial fan aggradation during the MIS 6 sea-level lowstand in the lower reach of the Tenryu River, Japan","authors":"Yuji Ishii","doi":"10.1002/esp.70146","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/esp.70146","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Alluvial fans in coastal regions serve as valuable archives of past climate variability, but the potential insights that could be derived from their aggradational histories remain largely unexplored. In this study, the depositional history of the ~60-m-thick Iwatahara terrace deposits along the coastal Tenryu River, central Japan, was reconstructed based on post-IR IRSL dating of K-feldspar grains. Multi-grain measurements of both pIRIR_50/150 and pIRIR_50/225 signals, along with single-grain measurements of pIRIR_50/225, were conducted to estimate depositional ages. Fading corrections were applied using different models, and their validity was evaluated based on the corrected ages of lagoonal muds independently dated to MIS 7c. Among the various combinations of fading correction models and luminescence signals, the close agreement between the pIRIR_50/225 ages corrected using one of the models and the expected age range for MIS 7c led to the selection of this model–signal combination as a reasonable approach for constraining depositional age. The results revealed three distinct phases of fan aggradation during MIS 8–6: 255–245 ka, 220–210 ka, and a major episode at 180–160 ka. Notably, the 180–160 ka deposits overlie those attributed to the MIS 7 sea-level highstand (~215 ka), despite an overall sea-level fall after ~200 ka. This stratigraphic relationship may indicate that the effects of fluvial incision driven by sea-level fall were outpaced by a substantially increased sediment supply from upstream during this period. The significant aggradation at 180–160 ka may have been driven primarily by enhanced sediment supply, resulting from intensified East Asian summer monsoon precipitation and widespread slope instability linked to a lowered treeline and reduced vegetation cover during this glacial period. These findings underscore the importance of thick alluvial fan deposits as sensitive recorders of climatic fluctuations.</p>","PeriodicalId":11408,"journal":{"name":"Earth Surface Processes and Landforms","volume":"50 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/esp.70146","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145012842","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Diamondiferous gravel barrier beach placer: Morpho-sedimentary dynamics and diamond distribution connectivity, SW Namibia","authors":"Renato I. (Spaggs) Spaggiari,&nbsp;Emese M. Bordy","doi":"10.1002/esp.70140","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/esp.70140","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The Atlantic Coast of south-western Namibia is renowned for its Pliocene to Holocene diamondiferous deposits, which contributed more than 63 million carats of diamonds to the global market. A continuum of fossil shoreline deposits associated with barriers to linear and pocket beaches stretches over circa 110 km in length. Of these, the most highly economic are the fossil linear and pocket beach deposits that are preserved over highly competent Proterozoic bedrock. Potholes and gullies, the prominent bedrock-trapsite features, have controlled diamond concentration. By contrast, the barrier shorelines that developed on unconsolidated fluvial and marine sediments at a palaeo-river mouth are less productive. Here, trapsites are absent and diamond accumulation and retention occurred via interstitial trapping in a coarse gravel framework under highly energetic littoral settings. It therefore follows that diamond enrichment is governed by the sedimentological characteristics of the gravel allied to the dynamics of their depositional environments. We examine the relationship of diamond enrichment with the littoral processes at an environmental and subenvironmental level of a latest Pliocene/earliest Pliocene gravel barrier beach complex (BBC). Results show variability in both diamond concentrations and sizes across the barrier that commensurate with a diversity of morpho-sedimentary dynamics.</p><p>The study, a first of its kind, provides insights into the diamond enrichment of a BBC. It demonstrates how detailed sedimentological reconstruction of the barrier environments can improve the exploration efficacy of such diamond-bearing littoral placers.</p>","PeriodicalId":11408,"journal":{"name":"Earth Surface Processes and Landforms","volume":"50 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/esp.70140","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145022202","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Advancing gully initiation modelling by means of a Curve Number (CN) method: A way forward?","authors":"Sofie De Geeter,&nbsp;Tadesual Asamin Setargie,&nbsp;Nigussie Haregeweyn,&nbsp;Gert Verstraeten,&nbsp;Jean Poesen,&nbsp;Atsushi Tsunekawa,&nbsp;Matthias Vanmaercke","doi":"10.1002/esp.70145","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/esp.70145","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 \u0000 <section>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Despite gullies significantly contributing to land degradation happening globally, predicting their spatial patterns in relation to climate, land use, and other factors remains challenging, especially in a process-oriented manner. Nevertheless, such models appear crucial for developing effective land management strategies. Over the past years, several studies have proposed using the curve number (CN) method to estimate potential runoff discharges. However, although promising, the actual performance of such a CN-based approach remains poorly tested, especially at large scales. Here we address this gap by evaluating the CN method's ability to predict gully head occurrence at different spatial scales in a process-oriented way. We propose a gully head initiation (GHI) index, reflecting the ratio between a shear stress index (SSI) and a critical shear stress index (CSI). On the one hand, the SSI is determined by a pixel's contributing area, slope and a CN-derived runoff depth estimate based on land use and soil type. On the other hand, the CSI is based on the estimated pixel soil clay content. We applied the GHI index at both the continental scale of Africa and at the local scale in two small (&lt;10 km²) catchments in the Ethiopian highlands, using state-of-the-art, high-resolution Geographic Information System (GIS) data layers, and tested the ability of the GHI index to distinguish gully heads from non-gully heads based on extensive datasets of mapped gully locations. Results show that the GHI index reasonably distinguishes pixels with and without gully heads across different scales, with area under the curve (AUC) values of 0.67 and 0.65 for the continental and local scale, respectively. The GHI index offers a conceptually sound description of gully initiation conditions, has low data requirements and requires no calibration, suggesting its potential to simulate gully erosion in more process-oriented ways. However, its performance is clearly lower than data-driven approaches that empirically relate gully occurrence to environmental variables derived from similar GIS layers (AUC of 0.83 at continental scale, 0.73 at local scale). We discuss possible reasons for this performance gap, such as the limited ability of the CN method to accurately simulate contrasts in runoff production and the high sensitivity to error propagation inherent to such a process-oriented approach, and explore future improvement avenues.</p>\u0000 </section>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":11408,"journal":{"name":"Earth Surface Processes and Landforms","volume":"50 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145012136","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Finer grained sediment pulses decrease variability in entrainment thresholds of bed material","authors":"Christian M. Erikson,&nbsp;Carl E. Renshaw,&nbsp;Francis J. Magilligan","doi":"10.1002/esp.70149","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/esp.70149","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Pulses of sediment finer than existing channel bed material can modify sediment transport dynamics, but they can also pass without a lasting effect. How a channel adjusts to a sudden influx of finer grained sediment is even more uncertain when sediment pulses are punctuated by extended periods of low sediment supply conditions. Such oscillations in sediment supply can be a byproduct of flood-control dams that only temporarily maintain reservoirs, sending pulses of finer grained sediment each time the reservoir is drained. Using a seasonally operated flood-control dam as a natural experiment, we quantified the entrainment thresholds of cobble-sized sediment through seasonal cycles in sediment supply conditions. The channel bed ranged from being without finer grains when dam gates were closed to being completely buried by them after dam gates opened. We paired tracer clasts embedded with accelerometers with a hydraulic flow model to determine the stresses acting on coarse grains at the time of motion across bed conditions. The influence of the sediment pulses was most evident in reduced variability in Shields numbers at the onset of motion relative to the expectations for a sand-free cobble bed. The observed variance in Shields numbers at the onset of motion best matched the expectation for cobbles moving over a bed of sand, likely reflecting the finer grains from the sediment pulses limiting hiding and protrusion effects on the mobility of coarser grains. While cobbles downstream of the flood-control dam were periodically disturbed, the pulses of finer grains were not able to disrupt the established armour layer.</p>","PeriodicalId":11408,"journal":{"name":"Earth Surface Processes and Landforms","volume":"50 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145012135","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Predicting rainfall kinetic energy under forest canopies—A pilot study using ULS","authors":"Johannes Antenor Senn,&nbsp;Jannika Schäfer,&nbsp;Zahra Hosseini,&nbsp;Steffen Seitz","doi":"10.1002/esp.70150","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/esp.70150","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Rainfall erosivity, expressed in kinetic energy, is determined by intensity, velocity and drop size distribution. In natural precipitation, these properties vary and can be substantially altered by the vegetation before reaching the ground. The splash effect of impacting raindrops on the soil surface can initiate soil erosion. While research in this regard has focussed on relating plant characteristics to erosion processes, there is a lack of studies that attempt to reverse this by predicting throughfall kinetic energy from plant properties. This has been attempted by the Vegetation Splash Factor (VSF), a model solely based on the three-dimensional distribution of vegetation surfaces derived from forest lidar forest data. We conducted a pilot study using the VSF model to validate it with in situ measurements and confirm its general suitability. We found a significant correlation between the observed and predicted effect of vegetation on the kinetic energy of rainfall, which demonstrates the suitability of the VSF, despite being solely based on structural traits. The observed effect of vegetation on rainfall kinetic energy exceeded literature reports, leading to systematic underestimation by the model. Our results showed that the VSF can be used to spatially continuously predict the effect of vegetation on the erosivity of rainfall from high-resolution lidar data. These findings open new possibilities for research on splash erosion under vegetation, shifting the perspective from point-based studies towards area-wide approaches. The simplicity of the approach facilitates adaptation for wider use. The first application of the VSF in a field study has proved that the concept is functional and can illustrate zones of increased potential for soil loss under full vegetation cover. This adds to the methodological tool box for erosion studies and can support decision-makers in forestry and agriculture in the future.</p>","PeriodicalId":11408,"journal":{"name":"Earth Surface Processes and Landforms","volume":"50 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/esp.70150","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144929720","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"地球科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}