Modelling vegetation growth and its impact on slope hydrology and stability

植被对坡面过程的重要性得到了广泛的认可。例如，植被可以减少到达地面的降雨量，因为它将水分储存在树冠上。植被还通过蒸发-蒸腾过程去除地下的水分，并通过其根部网络加强土壤。因此，在评估滑坡风险时，植被是一个重要的考虑因素。然而，尽管植被是动态的，并随着时间的推移而演变，但坡面水文和稳定性模型不允许植被随时间变化。拟议的研究将放宽这一关键限制，允许所有植被成分动态变化，从而有效地让植被生长，作为植物年龄、物种、当前气候条件和土壤中直接可用水的函数。该研究是解决边坡水文学和稳定性分析两个基本问题的重要垫脚石。首先，了解植被在什么生长阶段开始加固斜坡是至关重要的。这与减少滑坡风险的“软”办法特别相关，这种办法利用植被作为一种具有成本效益且往往以社区为基础的方式来管理滑坡风险。其次，全球气候条件正在发生变化，并将影响植被发展和坡地的水资源供应。未来几十年的模拟气候数据可以很容易地用于一系列二氧化碳情景，但我们缺乏一种手段来评估由于气候强迫而导致植被变化的地区未来几十年的滑坡风险。拟议的研究是跨学科的，将吸引英国和海外以及自然科学和工程学领域的一系列利益相关者的兴趣。

The importance of vegetation for slope processes is widely acknowledged. For instance vegetation can decrease the amount of rainfall reaching the ground as it stores water in the canopy. Vegetation also removes water from the ground by the evaporation-transpiration process and tends to strengthen the soil via its root network. Therefore vegetation is an important factor to take into account when evaluating landslide risk. However, although vegetation is dynamic and evolves through time, slope hydrology and stability models do not allow vegetation to vary over time. The proposed research will relax this critical limitation by allowing all vegetation components to vary dynamically, therefore effectively letting vegetation grow as a function of the age of the plant, the species, the current climatic conditions and water availability in the soil directly within the model. The proposed research is an important stepping stone to answer two fundamental questions for slope hydrology and stability analysis. Firstly it is critical to understand at what stage of growth vegetation starts reinforcing a slope. This is particularly relevant in the context of 'soft' approaches to landslide risk reduction which use vegetation as a cost effective and often community based way to manage landslide risk. Secondly climatic conditions are changing globally and will impact vegetation development and water availability on slopes. Modelled climate data for the next decades is readily available for a range of CO2 scenarios but we lack a means to evaluate landslide risk over the next decades in regions where vegetation is due to vary due to climatic forcing. The proposed research is cross disciplinary and will attract interest from a range of stakeholders both in the UK and overseas and across the natural sciences an engineering spectrum.