SBR-9506643 Michael D. Blum Eric C. Straffin Southern Illinois University at Carbondale Dissertation Improvement Research: Fluvial Response to Climate Change and Human Activities, Burgundy,France The proposed research will develop a model that relates fluvial processes, flood regimes,land-use patterns, and dominant climate regimes for the Arroux-Loire River system in Burgundy, France. The model will provide for the reconstruction of fluvial responses to past climate and environmental changes, as well as for the prediction of fluvial response to anthropogenic changes in regional climate in the near future. Documentation of over 200 years of changes in the fluvial landscape will be developed from cartographic and remotely-sensed data. Those changes will then be interpreted within the context of known land-use patterns, and historic changes in climate and river discharge regimes. Models developed for the period of historical monitoring will then be compared with reconstructions of older alluvial deposits, prehistoric land-use, and correlative proxy paleoenvironmental data to determine the r elationship between fluvial depositional and erosional processes and climate regimes over the last 2000 years. If the model correlates climatic regimes and fluvial styles, and this is valid for older alluvial deposits, then it may be possible to predict fluvial responses to future climate change for the same region. In this way the study provides a first step towards linking global environmental change with changes in landscape, enabling those regions with critical land-use needs to better plan for potential future environmental change
