The SEDIBUD (Sediment Budgets in Cold Environments) Programme: Ongoing activities and selected key tasks for the coming years

Projected climate change in cold environments is expected to alter melt-season duration and intensity, along with the number of extreme rainfall events, total annual precipitation and the balance between snowfall and rainfall. In addition, changes to the thermal balance are expected to reduce the extent of permafrost and seasonal ground frost and increase active layer depths. The combined effects of these changes will alter surface environments in cold climate regions and change the fluxes of sediments, nutrients and solutes, but the absence of data, coordinated process monitoring and coordinated quantitative analysis to understand the sensitivity of the Earth surface environment are acute in cold climate environments. The International Association of Geomorphologists (I.A.G./A.I.G.) SEDIBUD (Sediment Budgets in Cold Environments) Programme has been formed to address this key knowledge gap and builds on the earlier European Science Foundation (ESF) SEDIFLUX (Sedimentary Source-to-Sink-Fluxes in Cold Environments) Network. Coordinated efforts are carried out to monitor, quantify, compare and model sedimentary fluxes and possible effects of predicted climate change in currently 44 selected SEDIBUD Key Test Sites (cold climate environment catchments) worldwide.