Modelling Geomorphic Systems: Landscape Evolution

Landscape evolution models (LEMs) present the geomorphologist with a means of investigating how landscapes evolve in response to external forcings, such as climate and tectonics, as well as internal process laws. LEMs typically incorporate a range of different geomorphic transport laws integrated in a way that simulates the evolution of a 3D terrain surface forward through time. The strengths of LEMs as research tools lie in their ability to rapidly test many different hypotheses of landscape evolution, to investigate the importance of particular processes by isolating them within a model, and to make quantitative predictions of geomorphic change within landscapes. LEMs can be applied to situations lasting from days to millions of years in real time, but reduce this to minutes or hours in model run-time. This chapter presents a brief introduction to the underlying principles of landscape evolution modelling, followed by an overview of the features of currently available, commonly-used models, and example applications from recent literature. Suggestions for dealing with common pitfalls in landscape evolution modelling, calibration, and confirming model predictions are also discussed.