What is the relationship between the diversity of resources (e.g., space, sunlight, water, nutrients) and biodiversity? In most cases it is direct and positive—that is, the greater the diversity of resources the greater the biodiversity.  The relationship is also often mutually reinforcing—that is, byproducts, detritus, and the organisms themselves increase the diversity of the resource base. Of course, ultimately both resource and biodiversity are limited by both abiotic and biotic controls. The relationships look something like this:

The latest issue of Ecological Modelling (vol. 298) is out, a special issue on complexity of soils and hydrology in ecosystems. My article, The Robustness of Chronosequences, is available here. There's a lot of other interesting stuff in the special issue, too. Check it out!

Several studies have noted the temporal coincidence between shoreline erosion around some major deltas (e.g., Nile, Mississippi, Ebro), and the reduction of stream sediment loads due to reforestation, soil conservation practices, and trapping of river sediment behind dams. There are, of course, excellent reasons to suspect a causal link, but the link itself has not, in my view, been fully established.

Out on the trails of Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, this morning, I got to thinking about William Morris Davis’ “cycle of erosion” conceptual model (also called the geographical or geomorphological cycle). The drive-by, oversimplified version is that landscape evolution starts with uplift of a more-or-less planar, low relief surface. Weathering and erosion goes to work, and results in an initial stage of increasing relief as streams carve valleys, and slope processes operate on the slopes thereby created. Eventually, however, as the streams begin to approach base level, a new stage of decreasing relief begins as hilltops and drainage divides are lowered and valleys infilled. This continues until the entire landscape is about as close to baselevel as the geophysics of mass transport will allow, creating a low-relief, almost-planar surface called a peneplain. At some point a new episode of uplift occurs and the cycle begins anew.

I was thinking of this because many landscapes in the world, like the one I was viewing this morning, do give the impression of a dissected plateau or a low-relief surface into which denudational processes have cut.

The published version of Badass Geomorphology is hot off the press in Earth Surface Processes & Landforms. You can download it here.