On the role of hydrologic processes in soil and landscape evolution modeling: concepts, complications and partial solutions

In this contribution, we first briefly review processes and feedbacks in soil-landscape-hydrological systems. Next, we elaborate on the development required to include these processes in SLEMs. We discuss the state-of-the-art knowledge, identify complications, give partial solutions and suggest important future development. The main requirements for incorporating hydrologic processes in SLEMs are: (1) designing a model framework that can deal with varying timescales for different sets of processes, (2) developing and implementing methods for simulating pedogenesis as a function of water flow, (3) improving and implementing knowledge on the evolution and dynamics of soil hydraulic properties over different timescales, and (4) improving the database on temporal changes and dynamics of flow paths.