Recently, Eos Science News by AGU has published some highlights of the workshop “The Asian Sedimentary Continuum: Toward a Global Perspective (ASC)” held in Xiamen University in October 2019, involving more than 50 scientists from all over the world.
“How do humans affect the ways that Asia’s mega rivers deliver sediment and dissolved matter to farms, river deltas, and, eventually, the sea? A proposed study would construct an integrated picture.” The following are some highlights of the article based on the XMU workshop.
“Mega rivers” in Asia—considered here to be those with historical annual sediment discharge of about 100 megatons per year or greater—they share a common source in the Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau region (Figure 1), but a wide range of human and natural factors influences their fates.
In many of these long, large river systems and their receiving basins, human activity (e.g., dam construction, agriculture, river management, trawling) has dramatically changed the length of time that particulate and dissolved matter spends in the river on its journey to the ocean.
Asian mega rivers provide opportunities to study rivers that have common origins but vastly different downstream environments.
We need to understand the mechanisms by which sediment and bioactive constituents vary in space and time along the sedimentary continuum to determine economic and societal impacts.
Even in offshore areas, human activities may play major roles in the exchange of bioactive elements between the seafloor and ocean waters above.
The program proposed at the October 2019 workshop would be transformative, in that it would foster research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries and considers the sedimentary continuum holistically. Scientific communities (representing, e.g., geology and biogeochemistry) have a rich opportunity to collaborate and provide a comprehensive understanding of sedimentary dynamics and bioactive element cycling by investigating residence times, transport pathways, and exchanges of sediment and associated organics.
What Is ASC?
In October 2019, scientists from Asia, North America and Europe gathered in Xiamen, China, for a workshop entitled “The Asian Sedimentary Continuum: Toward a Global Perspective” (ASC). The workshop participants reached a consensus on the need to develop an international collaborative program to explore how human-induced landscape and seascape alterations and climate change affect the sedimentary continuum and the cycling of bioactive elements from mountains to the deep sea along major Asian rivers.
What Is Eos?
Eos is a source for news and perspectives about the Earth and space sciences and is published by the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Science Updates, such as this article, are designed for a broad audience that includes the worldwide scientific community and the science-engaged public.
What does Science Updates publish?
These articles may offer insight into and context of discussions and results presented at meetings, conferences, and workshops. The goal for science updates like this is to place descriptions of meetings within the broader context of an important issue rather than describing a meeting as an isolated event.
