Programm

Background and Rational

In large parts of the world, fluvial systems are characterized by strong human impacts. In many cases in Europe and the Old world, these impacts, which date back several thousand years, strongly altered the rivers to human dominated systems with negative impacts on the fluvial environment including reduced floodplain biodiversity and increased potential of flooding.

In the context of sustainable river management (e.g. improving the quality of freshwater ecosystems, restoration of floodplains and reducing the flood risk) a better understanding of the natural status of fluvial systems and their responses to human impacts is necessary. Since rivers are evolutionary systems and their present day functioning is strongly dependent on their history, a complete understanding of fluvial change often requires the perspective of long timescales - centuries to millennia - derived from palaeofluvial, documentary and archaeological records.

The LUCIFS-network, which is located within IGBP - PAGES Focus 4, is concerned with understanding past interactions between climate, human activity and fluvial systems. Its focus is on evaluating the impact of humans on landscapes on mid- to long-term timescales, utilising geomorphological and sedimentological approaches. Of particular relevance are aspects of sediment redistribution systems such as non-linear behaviour, the role of system configuration, scale effects, and emergent properties. Over the last decade the LUCIFS program has been investigating both contemporary and long-term (i.e. Holocene) river response to global change having several aims.

Objectives

LUCIFS addresses the long-term interactions between past climate, human activities and fluvial systems and thereby intends to improve the scientific basis for helping to ensure the security and value of fluvial ecosystems for the future. Therefore, LUCIFS aims at:

• quantifying land use and climate change impacts on river-borne fluxes of water, sediment, C, N and P;
• identification of internal and external controls on these fluxes at the catchment scale;
• understanding the interactions between fluvial system dynamics and human societies;
• unravelling the importance of the fluvial system in global biogeochemical cycles.

To achive these aims the LUCIFS programm has several scientific tasks: 

• synthesise results of regional case studies and make these available to the wider research community;
• encourage new case studies across a range of environments;
• identify research gaps and formulate new research questions by establishing collaboration with other research fields;
• organise thematic workshops and conference sessions.

By achieving these objectives, the LUCIFS program will contribute to environmental issues, such as:

• sustainable river management
• river restoration
• flood risk management

 Key questions

• Where in the world has seen the largest rate of increase in soil erosion or sediment flux over past century?
• How do we deal with autogenic adjustments and complex, internal feedbacks in fluvial systems, that obscure the external signal?
• When did anthropogenic effects first occur?
• Which areas have erosion/sediment flux rates increasing, decreasing or stable?
• Which zones are showing a change in fluvial/flood regime?
• What are the total quantities of sediment (with nutrients, like P,  and C) reaching the coast?
• Can we test modelled changes of sediment/C flux to the coast?
• How do the climate-land use combination of drivers change over the world?  For example, which areas have first order controls on sediment flux as human activities or climate or tectonics?
• Can we derive a global typology of climate-land use-erosion systems?
  

Scientific framework (PAGES-PHAROS)

• LUCIFS stragegy
• Working-groups
• Perspectives
• White papers (download)