Chemical weathering in Taiwanese catchments: Towards quantification of the controls on chemical weathering fluxes.

台湾岛为研究热带条件下高速率物理侵蚀的过程提供了一个理想的自然实验室。在这里，通过与土壤和基岩的反应控制河水成分的化学过程的运作是最不清楚的，但在当地和全球都是至关重要的。快速侵蚀的山地环境贡献了输送到海洋的大部分溶解物质和颗粒物质，并负责调节地球长期气候的反馈。它们也受到极端自然灾害的影响，包括山体滑坡、地震和水库快速蓄水，它们维持的生态系统可能对干扰特别敏感。所有这些过程都取决于土壤的形成方式，土壤物质被迅速地、经常是断断续续地从景观中移除。因此，了解在快速侵蚀环境中形成土壤的化学过程对当地环境和对地球表面环境控制的全球理解都至关重要。

The island of Taiwan offers an ideal natural laboratory for studying processes at high rates of physical erosion in tropical conditions. Here the operation of the chemical processes that control river water compositions by reactions with soils and bed rock is least well understood and yet critical both locally and globally. Rapidly eroding mountain environments contribute the majority of dissolved and particulate matter transported to the oceans and are responsible for the feedbacks that moderate Earth's long-term climate. They are also subject to extreme natural hazards including landslides, earthquakes, and rapid reservoir filling, and they maintain ecosystems that may be particularly sensitive to disturbance. All of these processes depend on the way that soils are established under conditions where soil material is removed rapidly, and often episodically, from the landscape. Understanding such soil-forming chemical processes in rapidly eroding settings is consequently critical both to the local environment, and to the global understanding of controls on the Earth' surficial environment.