A LUCIFS Strategy: Modelling the Sediment Budgets of Fluvial Systems

Cumulative Global Change is occurring through the removal of forests, conversion of marginal land to cultivation, and intensification of cultivation. Systemic Global Change, in the form of changes in climate and atmospheric chemistry, is likely to alter land use patterns during the next century. All of these changes will affect rivers and their catchments, altering the fluxes of water, sediment, nutrients, carbon and pollutants. The effects of past changes of land use and climate are still being felt in many catchments, and are difficult to understand without an historical perspective. Future changes, when superimposed on changes triggered in the past, will produce complex responses, which may be difficult to anticipate.