Landscape and climate interaction on Marion Island

Abstract

Marion Island in the southern ocean has a hyper-maritime climate and an environment where diurnal processes dominate the landscape. Results from automated and manual experiments on a variety of landscape elements show that the landscape on Marion Island is dominated by the passage of synoptic scale weather systems. These systems influences the thermal characteristics of soil, river dynamics, intensity of rainfall, snowfall, soil frost dynamics, needle ice development, aeolian erosion and a host of other abiotic processes and its direct and indirect interactions with the ecosystem. The sub-Antarctic is a unique environment since the impact of climate change on the landscape occurs at a higher resolution than for seasonal and permafrost environments and our research are therefore focused on interaction at the synoptic time scale. This presentation reviews the current knowledge on the interaction between climate and the landscape, the current methodologies employed to investigate these interactions and specifically addresses the possible landscape responses under a future climate. - Abstract as displayed in the - Abstract booklet. The presentation on the day may differ from the - Abstract.