Just published, in Geomorphology (Vol. 403, article no. 108666): Landscape Change and Climate Attribution, With an Example From Estuarine Marshes.

Climate change and related effects such as rising sea-levels and increased frequency and severity of severe storms and fires is resulting in geomorphological, hydrological, ecological, and pedological change. But landscape change is influenced not only by climate and severe meteorological events, but also by a host of other environmental factors, not least human impacts. How can we sort out the effects of recent and ongoing anthropically-driven climate change amidst all the other signals (and noise)?

The science of attribution of weather events and episodes, developed to address the issue of the extent to which human-driven climate change causes or influences such events (or not), is advancing rapidly. But attribution of landscape responses adds several additional causal layers to unravel due to all the non-climate factors involved.

This paper is my attempt to work out a protocol to address landscape response attribution (LRA). It is based on proven, traditional methods in field and historical geomorphology and to varying extents represents existing practice in historical branches of Earth and environmental sciences. The LRA protocol, presented in the form of a decision tree, is more a checklist than a specific methodology. As problems of LRA span the entire range of geomorphology (and ecology, hydrology, etc.) the potentially applicable methods and techniques are as broad as the discipline itself.

The abstract is below, and the article is attached.