716411 VU Field and Laboratory Methods: Soil landscape modeling
winter semester 2024/2025 | Last update: 29.08.2024 | Place course on memo listSoil-landscape modelling
This class introduces you to soil- and landscape evolution modelling: essential tools for an understanding of long-term landscape dynamics, and for making realistic policy suggestions for the future.
Although the class has a substantial coding/scripting component, we start from field-based insights obtained during several short excursions. These insights provide the starting points for, and hopefully your interest in, long-term soil and landscape dynamics.
Soils and landscapes develop together, with erosion determining among others the thickness of soil, and soil properties determining erodibility. This sets up a beautiful dynamic (or dance), which illustrates the importance of visualisations in this class.
Learning objectives & key terms
- Explain what geomorphic and pedologic models are used for (exploration, explanation, interpolation, prediction)
- Give a basic understanding of how geomorphic and pedologic models work (1D, 2D, 3D, 4D, matrix, pixel, voxel, flow equations)
- Discuss examples of how physical understanding of a process is translated into equations and then into models (empirical-mechanistic, process-based/physically-based, first-principle, art or science, calibration/validation)
- Explain how different levels of realism require different model inputs, model equations, and computational resources
- List basic approaches to modelling the best-known geomorphic and pedological processes (creep, erosion, landslides, debris flows – weathering, carbon sequestration, bioturbation, clay illuviation).
- Be able to visualize a variety of model outputs, and animate these visualizations where appropriate (timeseries, vertical sections, horizontal sections, maps)
- SDG 13 - Climate action: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts by regulating emissions and promoting developments in renewable energy.
- SDG 15 - Life on land: Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.
| Group | Booking period | |
|---|---|---|
| 716411-0 | 2024-09-01 00:00 - 2024-09-21 23:59 | |
| Giarola A., Temme A. | ||