Today, climate change is affecting virtually all terrestrial and nearshore settings. How well do we understand the physical landscape effects, and how have planning and economic sectors responded so far? This presentation will discuss the challenges of identifying and measuring climate-driven physical landscape responses to modern warming and its associated hydrologic shifts. Challenges include short, incomplete data records, land use and seismicity masking climatic effects, biases in data availability and resolution, signals dominated by individual extreme events, and signal attenuation in sedimentary systems. Despite such challenges, the scientific community has important opportunities to learn from historical and paleo data, to select especially informative study sites, and to learn also from studies producing null results. Fortunately, our knowledge base in these subjects is growing rapidly, leading to substantial progress in protecting communities physically and financially. Knowing that climate-driven sedimentary and geomorphic changes influence human health and safety, infrastructure, water–food–energy security, and economies, we will examine examples of how those effects are being incorporated into planning and design today.

    Amy East is a research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Santa Cruz, California, studying earth-surface processes including wildfires, landslides, flooding, and river response to dams and dam removals. She holds a B.S. In geological sciences from Tufts University, a Ph.D. in geology and geophysics from MIT, and a Professional Geologist license from the State of California.