Journal subject areas

Earth Surface Dynamics (ESurf) welcomes papers studying the physical, chemical, and biological interactions with the Earth's surface. Papers may involve advances in theory, new observations using field or remote techniques as well as experimental and numerical modelling of Earth surface processes and their interactions with the lithosphere, biosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and pedosphere.

ESurf prioritizes studies with general implications for Earth surface science and especially values contributions that straddle discipline boundaries, enhance theory–observation feedback, and/or apply basic principles from physics, chemistry, or biology. These may be over any timescale and space scale.

General ESurf subject areas are described below, but this list is not exclusive and we actively encourage papers that span or go beyond them.

Earth surface interaction Sub-discipline
Physical
  • geomorphology (including all aspects of fluvial, coastal, aeolian, hillslope and glacial geomorphology)
  • planetary geomorphology
  • geophysics
  • landscape evolution: modelling and field studies
  • tectonics
Chemical
  • chemical weathering
  • isotopic tracing of Earth's surface processes
  • carbon cycling
  • water and soil quality at all scales
  • organic complexation of metals and role of organic matter
Biological
  • eco-hydrology
  • bio-geomorphology
  • life and landscape: human interaction with Earth surface processes
Cross-cutting themes
  • establish timing and rates of Earth surface processes by applying geochronology
  • complex systems in Earth surface processes: nonlinear system dynamics and chaos, self-organization, self-organized criticality
  • quantitative and statistical methods in Earth surface dynamics
  • impacts of climate change on Earth surface dynamics
  • digital landscapes: insights into geomorphological processes from high-resolution topography and quantitative interrogation of topographic data
  • critical zone processes
  • coupling of chemical, physical, and biological processes