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Abstract In most landscape evolution models, extreme rainfall enhances river incision. In steep landscapes, however, these events trigger landslides that can buffer incision via increased sediment delivery and aggradation. We quantify landslide sediment aggradation and erosional buffering with a natural experiment in southern Taiwan where a northward gradient in tectonic activity drives increasing landscape steepness. We find that landscape response to extreme rainfall during the 2009 typhoon Morakot varied along this gradient, where steep areas experienced widespread channel sediment aggradation of >10 m and less steep areas did not noticeably aggrade. We model sediment export to estimate a sediment removal timeline and find that steep, tectonically active areas with the most aggradation may take centuries to resume bedrock incision. Expected sediment cover duration reflects tectonic uplift. We find that despite high stream power, sediment cover may keep steep channels from eroding bedrock for up to half of a given time period. This work highlights the importance of dynamic sediment cover in landscape evolution and suggests a mechanism by which erosional efficiency in tectonically active landscapes may decrease as landscape steepness increases.

Understanding the history of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) is critical for determining its sensitivity to warming and contribution to sea level; however, that history is poorly known before the last interglacial. Most knowledge comes from interpretation of marine sediment, an indirect record of past ice-sheet extent and behavior. Subglacial sediment and rock, retrieved at the base of ice cores, provide terrestrial evidence for GrIS behavior during the Pleistocene. Here, we use multiple methods to determine GrIS history from subglacial sediment at the base of the Camp Century ice core collected in 1966. This material contains a stratigraphic record of glaciation and vegetation in northwestern Greenland spanning the Pleistocene. Enriched stable isotopes of pore-ice suggest precipitation at lower elevations implying ice-sheet absence. Plant macrofossils and biomarkers in the sediment indicate that paleo-ecosystems from previous interglacial periods are preserved beneath the GrIS. Cosmogenic²⁶Al/¹⁰Be and luminescence data bracket the burial of the lower-most sediment between <3.2 ± 0.4 Ma and >0.7 to 1.4 Ma. In the upper-most sediment, cosmogenic²⁶Al/¹⁰Be data require exposure within the last 1.0 ± 0.1 My. The unique subglacial sedimentary record from Camp Century documents at least two episodes of ice-free, vegetated conditions, each followed by glaciation. The lowermore »sediment derives from an Early Pleistocene GrIS advance.²⁶Al/¹⁰Be ratios in the upper-most sediment match those in subglacial bedrock from central Greenland, suggesting similar ice-cover histories across the GrIS. We conclude that the GrIS persisted through much of the Pleistocene but melted and reformed at least once since 1.1 Ma.

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