| Session Details | |
| Section | BG - Biogeosciences |
| Session Title | Land Use and Climate Impacts on Fluvial Systems |
| Main Convener | Prof. David Higgitt (National University of Singapore, Singapore) |
| Co-convener(s) | Prof. Robert Wasson (National University of Singapore, Singapore) Dr. Xi Xi Lu (National University of Singapore, Singapore) Dr. Dan Penny (University of Sydney, Australia) Ms. Stacy Oon (Macquarie University, Australia) |
| Session Description | Land Use and Climate Impacts on Fluvial Systems (LUCIFS) is an initiative under PAGES (Post Global Changes) Core Project of the IGBP. The aim of this session is to explore the impacts of environmental change on river basins, with particular attention to Asian rivers where the magnitude of human impact through land use change and water resource management has increased rapidly. This session seeks to reinvigorate LUCIFS-ASIA, to examine how river basins have changed during the period of agriculture. Rivers act as conduits for transferring sediment and nutrients from terrestrial sources to the coastal shelf, prompting geoscientists to explore a number of issues concerning quantification of sediment flux and denudation rates and the estimation of sediment and carbon budgets. The functioning of river basins is impacted by both natural and human-induced environmental change. Human-induced changes in river basins have implications for large scale geochemical cycles and, in turn, for the functioning of aquatic ecosystems. Reconstructing changes in river basin dynamics and biogeochemical cycles from sediment archives and other proxies is another challenge. |