Understanding transient response to climate change in coupled hydro-eco-geomorphic landscapes

气候变化可以说是本世纪人类面临的最大挑战。作为应对气候变化的一部分，我们必须了解我们的景观将如何应对气候变化。这不是一项简单的任务；我们的景观是由一系列复杂的相互交织的过程定义的：当水和沉积物在景观中移动时，它会影响生活在那里的植被，而植被反过来又控制着这些水和沉积物的过程。在英国，气候变化将意味着更极端的温度，更多的冬季降雨，以及更强烈的风暴导致更潮湿的高地斜坡；植物将不得不适应这种变化的环境，这些因素结合起来将影响景观对气候变化的反应方式。这对在高地地区生活和工作的人们有着重要的、潜在的昂贵影响。我的奖学金将通过与美国和欧洲的国际专家的研究合作，促进我们对水文学、生态学和地貌学之间联系的理解。减少其影响的一种方法是提高我们预测景观对气候变化的反应的能力。模型是很好的工具；这些简化的现实版本使我们能够对尚未发生的事情做出预测。通过了解要寻找的因素，我们可以确定特别容易受到这种事件影响的区域，而无需事件发生。目前的模型提供了个别过程的宝贵信息，但未能捕捉到整体情况，因为它们错过了这些过程之间的联系，特别是植物对山体滑坡的影响，反之亦然。在这项研究中，我将展示这些联系的重要性，并提供一个整体研究框架，以解决没有学科界限的地球表面系统。我将从单独处理泥沙和水转移的模型的一些问题开始。通过这样做，我将提高我们对这个系统如何响应气候变化的理解，并提供一个模板来展示山体滑坡对环境中植被发展的重要性。这一点很重要，因为生态系统提供了重要但尚未完全了解的服务，包括碳储存和营养调节。然后，我可以将植被、沉积物和水之间的关系重新输入到模型中，以提高我们预测景观对气候变化的反应的能力。这些预测是有价值的，因为我们知道我们的景观将会改变；这项研究帮助我们预测如何以及何时发生，这些知识使我们能够面对这些变化的挑战。

Climate change is arguably the biggest challenge facing people this century. As part of living with climate change we must understand how our landscape will respond to it. This isn't a simple task; our landscape is defined by a complex set of intertwined processes: as water and sediment moves across the landscape it effects the vegetation that lives there which in turn controls these water and sediment processes. In the UK, climate change will mean greater extremes of temperature, more winter rainfall, and more intense storms leading to wetter upland slopes; plants will have to adapt to this altered environment and these in combination will affect the way the landscape responds to climatic changes. This has important and potentially costly implications for the people that live and work in upland areas. My fellowship will advance our understanding of the linkages between hydrology, ecology and geomorphology through research collaboration with international experts across the US and Europe. One way of reducing its impact would be to increase our ability to predict the landscape's response to altered climate. Models are excellent tools to do this; these simplified versions of reality give us the ability to make predictions about things that have not yet happened. By knowing what factors to look for we can identify areas that will be particularly susceptible to this kind of event, without the event needing to happen. Current models provide valuable information on individual processes but fail to capture the overall picture because they miss the links between these processes, particularly the influence of plants on landslides and vice versa. Within this fellowship I will demonstrate the importance of these links and provide a framework for holistic research that addresses the earth surface system without disciplinary boundaries. I will start by addressing some of the problems with the models that deal with sediment and water transfer in isolation. In doing this I will both improve our understanding of how this system responds to climate change and provide a template to show how important landslides are to the development of vegetation in an environment. This is important because ecosystems provide important and incompletely understood services, including carbon storage and nutrient regulation. I can then work the relationships between vegetation, sediment and water back into the models to improve our ability to predict the landscape's response to changing climate. These predictions are valuable because we know that our landscape is set to change; this research helps us to predict how and when, and that knowledge allows us to face the challenges of these changes.