Collaborative research: Linking landslide and windstorm exposure to regional carbon stocks and fluxes in the largest US forest carbon reservoir, southeast Alaska

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Landslides are important factors in the global carbon cycle as well as a significant risk to human life around the world. This project focuses on better understanding the geophysics of landslides in forested areas, specifically how they move soils and woody debris. Understanding the complex mechanics of these debris flows is essential to determining the relationship between landslides and carbon stocks in forested systems worldwide. By coupling with a regional wind exposure model, this work will also create a new way of visualizing hazard/risk to communities in steep terrain, relevant to many small towns in the US and abroad. Explicit coordination with those communities is planned.This study will address a fundamental question in disturbance ecology: How much disturbance maximizes carbon on a landscape, and where is that carbon located? This is globally relevant, as disturbances are projected to increase as a result of climate warming in most systems. Second, it will incorporate woody debris into mechanical landslide models, which will fundamentally advance our geological understanding of this process. Extensive fieldwork will be coupled with physics-based numerical modeling to synthesize a full scientific understanding of how disturbances influence the landscape and ecosystem with respect to carbon cycling.This award is cofunded by the Geomorphology and Land-use Dynamics Program, the Prediction of and Resilience against Extreme Events Program, and the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research.