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The Geosciences for a Sustainable Planet network is an initiative reinforced by the recent integration of the Spanish Geological Survey (IGME) and the Oceanographic Spanish Institute (IEO) within the Spanish Scientific Research Council (CSIC). The network is aimed to provide Geosciences in Spain with a collaborative framework, to maximize synergies and address sustainability and future challenges with a planetary perspective. The network shares the strategic vision for the study and care of planet Earth as the only home available for our future, as embraced by many international organizations (e. g. the European Geosciences Union (EGU), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), and the European Marine Board (EMB)). In Spain, Geosciences have played a fundamental role in properly assessing, managing, and seeking solutions for several natural and anthropogenic crises, e.g. the oil spill after the sinking of the Prestige petroleum vessel, the dumping of toxic mine sludge in Aznalcóllar, the eruption of the Cumbre Vieja volcano in La Palma island, the 2011 earthquake of Lorca, the environmental collapse of the Mar Menor oastal lagoon, or the decline in the groundwaters of Doñana National Park. Geoscientists have engaged as first responders with government agencies in emergency situations. Besides, geosciences is providing essential knowledge for public administration, as well as energy and mineral resources companies, water supply, contamination and waste elimination and reuse, and adaptation to geological and natural hazards. The network will enhance the capacity of the CSIC to respond to both, societal and public administration demands. Geosciences also provide the temporal and spatial scale to place current climate and environmental crises in the appropriate context. The network will implement outreach activities to illustrate the interactions of surface processes and biosphere with climatic fluctuations, atmosphe

Extreme floods are anticipated to become more frequent in a future warmer climate. However, the long-term alterations in flood patterns across different regions of Europe remain unclear. In this study, we present a 15,000-year record of extreme floods in the Duero River, located in the southwestern Atlantic region. We analysed slackwater flood sediments, quantified the discharge and timing of individual flood beds over millennial time scales, and identified their potential climate influences. The composite record includes at least 62 floods grouped into ten flood-rich periods (with an average duration of 230 years). A high-frequency phase of moderate-magnitude floods (>10 events) occurred at ∼11.6–11.5 ka, following a period of reduced flood activity during the Younger Dryas. Similar clusters of Early Holocene floods (10.8–10.3 ka, 9.5 ka) coincided with or preceded meltwater pulses from the North Atlantic. The absence of palaeoflood records with discharges exceeding 6100 m3/s during the Mid-Holocene suggests a decline in winter hydro-meteorological extremes. High flood magnitudes were recorded during transition periods toward cooler and wetter conditions at 4.4, 2.3, 0.5, and 0.11 ka with discharges ranging from 7600 to 10,000 m3/s. These periods were interpreted as indicative of a southward shift in cyclone tracks in Europe driven by negative phases of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Conversely, flood magnitudes decreased during past warmer climate conditions (1.7 ka, 0.9 ka, and the present), although flood frequency remained high. The current decline in flood frequency reflects an increase in flood regulation due to dams, but it is also consistent with the prevailing positive trend in the NAO observed over the last 40 years., Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (España), Dirección General del Agua, Fundación Biodiversidad, Union Europea, Depto. de Geodinámica, Estratigrafía y Paleontología, Fac. de Ciencias Geológicas, TRUE, pub

Characterizing flood-related hazards has mostly relied on deterministic approaches or, occasionally, on particular uncertainty sources, resulting in fragmented approaches. To analyze flood hazard uncertainties, a fully integrated floodplain modeling information system has been developed. We assessed the most relevant uncertainty sources influencing the European Floods Directive’s third cycle (2022–2027) concerning extreme flood scenarios (a 500-year flood) and compared the results to a deterministic approach. Flood hazards outputs noticeably differed between probabilistic and deterministic approaches. Due to flood quantiles and floodplain roughness characterization, the flood area is highly variable and subject to substantial uncertainty, depending on the chosen approach. Model convergence required a large number of simulations, even though flow velocity and water depth did not always converge at the cell level. Our findings show that deterministic flood hazard mapping is insufficiently trustworthy for flood risk management, which has major implications for the European Floods Directive’s implementation.

The cryosphere, including ice caps, ice sheets, ice shelves, mountain glaciers, snow cover, permafrost, and sea ice, is a key component of the Earth system. It plays a critical role in response to climate change and serves as a primary source of freshwater (Li et al., 2018; Yao et al., 2022). In recent decades, the cryosphere has undergone rapid changes, such as the melting of glaciers and sea ice, the decrease of snow cover and the degradation of permafrost. These changes have far-reaching consequences for both Earth’s climate system and the living environment of humans. Therefore, cryosphere research is of great importance to understand cryospheric change and its potential impacts on other spheres of the Earth. Over the last decades, there have been notable advancements in cryosphere monitoring through remote sensing technology. The improvement in spatial and temporal resolution of satellite imagery has contributed significantly to enhancing the understanding of cryosphere processes as well as allowing the development of new algorithms, data products and interdisciplinary integration with other fields of study. Despite significant advancements in cryosphere research, certain limitations still exist. Satellite images can be affected by cloud cover, atmospheric interference, and other factors that can limit accuracy and reliability. Furthermore, integrating these data with ground-based measurements and other forms of data is still challenging to comprehensively understand the changes in the cryosphere and its response to climate change., Remote sensing provides a viable option for studying the cryosphere in space due to its inaccessibility. Modern satellites and high-quality data provide a rich resource for cryosphere-related studies, while efficient algorithms make it more capable. Remote sensing is typically used to evaluate past changes and regularly monitor different components of the cryosphere. This facilitates better attribution and prediction of climatic parameters and their potential impacts on the cryosphere.

Understanding the occurrence of large magnitude flood events is essential in a changing climate. Yet, these flood events are rare, and its estimation is challenging due to the shortage of the gauging station records and their limited spatial distribution. The geological and botanical evidence left by past extreme flood events can overcome this drawback, extending the instrumental records by hundreds or thousands of years. Geological flood records are often obtained from stratigraphic sequences of sand and silt deposited in slackwater (SWDs) or in eddy sedimentary environments and dated by geochronological methods (radiocarbon and luminescence techniques). Botanical flood records are described as external disturbance on trees (e.g., scar or tilted stems) or changes in vegetation patterns caused by flood impacts and dated using tree-rings procedures. Both geological and botanical evidence define paleostage indicators (PIs) that can be used to estimate the flood discharges using hydraulic modeling. These flood magnitude estimations are essential inputs for improving flood-frequency analysis. Here we revise the latest advance in this hydrological discipline and underline its scientific and technological interest to design critical infrastructures (e.g., dams and bridges), risk planning, and climate change impact studies.

The primary goal of paleoflood hydrology is to estimate the frequency and magnitude of past floods. Botanical evidence, and particularly scars on trees, has been used repeatedly as paleostage indicators to reconstruct peak discharges and flood height. Yet, these reconstructions depend on the presence of visible scars on tree stems which tend to be masked as trees grow older. Here, we estimated flood magnitude using an alternative approach based on growth disturbances in tree-ring series, tree positions and the minimal discharge necessary to submerge the root collar of a tree as estimated by hydraulic modeling. We tested the reliability of this newly developed approach by using the traditional scar-based reconstruction as a benchmark. To this end, we sampled 60 trees showing evidence of flood damage on their stems along a 787-m long segment of the Asco river (Corsica, France). Based on 440 growth disturbances dated in tree-ring series, we reconstructed 28 floods between 1759 and 2020 and 18 during the 20th century. Using the two-dimensional Iber hydraulic model and detailed topographic data of the study site obtained from UAV imagery, we estimated that peak discharges of the 28 reconstructed events ranged between 10 and 210 m3s−1, with 200 m3s−1 being considered as the threshold for extreme floods. Not only do the scar-based and root collar submersion approaches yield similar results, findings are also clearly in line with the sparse information available from historical archives and short gauge station records on past floods. The unprecedented length and depth of the record presented here opens new avenues for climate change and flood impact research.

Previous attempts to quantify tree abundance at global scale have largely neglected the role of local competition in modulating the influence of climate and soils on tree density. Here, we evaluated whether mean tree size in the world’s natural forests alters the effect of global productivity on tree density. In doing so, we gathered a vast set of forest inventories including >3000 sampling plots from 23 well-conserved areas worldwide to encompass (as much as possible) the main forest biomes on Earth. We evidence that latitudinal productivity patterns of tree density become evident as large trees become dominant. Global estimates of tree abundance should, therefore, consider dependencies of latitudinal sources of variability on local biotic influences to avoid underestimating the number of trees on Earth and to properly evaluate the functional and social consequences.

Natural hazards remain recurrent processes that often disrupt the status quo of communities and put the future welfare of people at risk. In the Pyrenees, extreme events related to floods, rockfall, landslides, or snow avalanches have recurrently affected transport corridors and human settlement. Coping with such impacts in the future requires paradigm change toward the implementation of Ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction (Eco-DRR) tools and land use. Yet, little is known about the reliability of these approaches in long term. Here, we review a long-term experience (more than a century) from implementing the Eco-DRR strategies, so-called Los Arañones, to protect the International Railway Station of Canfranc (Spain-France) against snow avalanches and torrential floods. The Eco-DRR implemented in Los Arañones consisted of two different strategies (i) at short term, innovative nature-based design dikes; and (ii) at long term, systematic reforestation of hill slopes. We show that, after more than a hundred years since forest engineers implemented these measurements (Benito Ayerbe, 1872–1917), they still can protect the existing infrastructure, although the cost of maintenance to keep the reliability of such Eco-DRR are steadily increasing. Our analyses call for further assessment of its effectiveness and efficiency under climate change stressors, to assure its reliability for the next decades. This example will cast light on implementing such Eco-DRR solutions in the other mountain regions worldwide.

The 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offer a blueprint for global peace and prosperity, while conserving natural ecosystems and resources for the planet. However, factors such as climate-induced weather extremes and other High-Impact Low-Probability (HILP) events on their own can devastate lives and livelihoods. When a pandemic affects us, as COVID-19 has, any concurrent hazards interacting with it highlight additional challenges to disaster and emergency management worldwide. Such amplified effects contribute to greater societal and environmental risks, with cross-cutting impacts and exposing inequities. Hence, understanding how a pandemic affects the management of concurrent hazards and HILP is vital in disaster risk reduction practice. This study reviews the contemporary literature and utilizes data from the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) to unpack how multiple extreme events have interacted with the coronavirus pandemic and affected the progress in achieving the SDGs. This study is especially urgent, given the multidimensional societal impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic amidst climate change. Results indicate that mainstreaming risk management into development planning can mitigate the adverse effects of disasters. Successes in addressing compound risks have helped us understand the value of new technologies, such as the use of drones and robots to limit human exposure. Enhancing data collection efforts to enable inclusive sentinel systems can improve surveillance and effective response to future risk challenges. Stay-at-home policies put in place during the pandemic for virus containment have highlighted the need to holistically consider the built environment and socio-economic exigencies when addressing the pandemic’s physical and mental health impacts, and could also aid in the context of increasing climate-induced extreme events. As we have seen, such policies, services, and technologies, along with good nutrition, can significantly help safeguard

In China, flash floods are one of the main natural disasters causing loss of life and damage to infrastructure. The threat of flash floods is exacerbated with climate change and increased human activities, such that the number of disasters has shown a clear upward trend in recent years. However, due to the scarcity of instrumental data or overly short timeseries, we are still lacking critical data to understand spatio-temporal patterns and driving factors of extreme flash floods. This missing knowledge is however crucial for a proper management of these hazards, especially in remote mountain environments. In forested catchments, dendrogeomorphology allows the reconstruction of past process activity based on growth disturbances (GDs) in trees that have been affected by past flash floods. Therefore, in our study, for the first time, we reconstruct past flash floods in the Qilian Mountains, northeast Tibetan Plateau, over past centuries. To this end, we sampled 99 Qinghai spruce (Picea crassifolia) trees affected by flash floods, with a total of 194 increment cores, and identified 302 GDs induced by past flash floods. These GDs have been caused by at least 21 flash floods that we are able to reconstruct over the last 170 years. The position of GDs within tree rings and the intra-seasonal dating of past events also allowed discussion of the likely synoptic situations that may have led to the triggering of flash floods in the past. Logistic regression analysis confirms that significant correlation exists between cumulative maximum 5-day August–September precipitation and reconstructed flash floods, which is corresponding to the majority of scars and related tangential rows of traumatic resin ducts (TRDs) found in the latewood portion of growth rings. These results support the idea that abundant precipitation occurring at the end of the summer season and early fall is the key factor driving flash floods in our study area. Our research not only fills the gaps regarding his

Climate change could impair riparian vegetation dynamics through more intense and frequent climatic extreme events such as flash flooding. However, it is still poorly known how climate warming can also impair vegetation recovery through control on cellular traits after such extreme events. Here, we analyze how Mediterranean riparian tree species (namely Alnus glutinosa, Fraxinus angustifolia, and Salix atrocinerea) recover after wounds caused by intense floods using 239 X-ray computed tomography (XRCT) images taken on 30 trees. The XRCT imagery allowed to characterize wounds-related macroscopic parameters in different sections along the stems in three dimensions. Then, we quantified the annual wound closure rates by dating dendrochronologically each wound and measuring the annual overgrowth on the wounded area. Finally, we used linear mixed models to investigate how wound closure rates are affected by climate conditions. Our results show that wound closure varies between species. A. glutinosa and F. angustifolia presented higher wound recovery rates than S. atrocinerea. However, the statistical analyses suggest that F. angustifolia and S. atrocinerea tend to recover much less(more) during drier(wetter) years than A. glutinosa. Our results suggest that A. glutinosa could be more stressed under climate change in the Mediterranean region, where the cooccurrence of drier conditions with extreme flood events may increase.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an approach to estimate peat accumulation rates (PAR) over recent decades based on the age and burial depths of roots from pine sapling and to use the newly developed approach to estimate spatial variations of PAR. To this end, we sampled 120 pine saplings growing in three plots at Rėkyva peatland in Lithuania and accounted for the microtopography around each specimen. In the lab, all saplings were cut into 1-cm segments, sanded and analysed. The counting of annual rings allowed dating the germination of each sapling with a yearly resolution and thus also enabled estimation of peat accumulation. The latter was derived by measuring the distance from the original root collar at germination to the ground level (or peat surface) at the time of sampling. The large number of samples selected from three plots also enabled determination of spatial variations in PAR. We obtain averaged PAR values of 1.6 ± 0.72 cm yr−1 across the three plots and over the last decades, but also observe strong spatial heterogeneity in PAR resulting from differences in local hydrology and vegetation. To validate the results, we compared tree-ring derived PAR with radiocarbon-based (14C) estimates at one of the plots. The results are consistent between the two approaches with PAR estimated to 0.8 and 0.79 cm yr−1, respectively, over the last 20 years. We conclude that PAR can be assessed accurately with tree-ring approaches and that they have clear advantages over radiocarbon dating for shorter timescales as they can be replicated more easily. For longer timescales and larger depths (> 15 cm), however, 14C dating remains the preferred approach.