2025 CSDMS meeting-114
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Ecohydrology and lithological controls on ephemeral catchments landscape evolution: insights from the High Plains (Colorado) using high-resolution climate projections
Yuval Shmilovitz,
CIRES, University of Colorado Boulder Boulder Colorado, United States. yuval.shmilovitz@colorado.edu
Over the recent geological past, alternations in the sediment budget of low-order dryland catchments were observed worldwide, leaving behind pronounced topographic imprints. The modern consequences of similar shifts extend from damage to ecosystems, infrastructure, and crop yield to worldwide geopolitics. Quantifying erosion trends and understanding potential drivers for changes in the sediment budget is, however, a long-lasting challenge; ephemeral catchments are commonly situated in hydrological and vegetation boundary zones, greatly impacted by fine-scale and episodic erosion-triggered climatic events that are hard to observe and computationally complex over landscape evolution time scale.
This poster presents a set of catchment-scale landscape evolution numerical experiments designed according to field observations and projected climate records for the end of the 21st century over the High Plains of Colorado (USA), derived from a convection-permitting climate model. The results demonstrate how changes in minute-scale rainfall bursts, as measured under modern global warming, could significantly enhance erosion rates and impact multi-century landscape evolution, even without a change in the general wetness level. Further, the presented modeling approach translates the future climate projection over the High Plains into changes in vegetation cover and an increase in sediment yield, contrary to the predicted general precipitation reduction in the region. Modeling results, in conjunction with hints about relations between catchment morphology, soil/lithological properties, and vegetation cover observed at the study area, reveal key aspects of surface processes in ephemeral catchments that contribute to the understanding of landscape evolution under climatic changes.
