Current fields of interest focus primarily on Earth's surface processes and landforms. The main goal of my research is to provide relevant information on the dynamics of surface processes, thus enabling the interaction between geomorphic processes and physico-chemical systems. The topics include the following:
1.Landscape dynamics via on-site monitoring and numerical simulation.
a.Badland landscape dynamics
Dr. Yang has published 5 SCI papers related to badland landscape dynamics since 2019, including 4 papers listed as first author, one of them was published in Nature Communications. As far, Dr. Yang provides a framework to investigate how tectonic and climatic processes on mudstone badland evolution in southwestern Taiwan. The next part of the project aims at generating the spatially complete set of observational constraints on badland landscape.
2.Fluvial process during major floods in mountain rivers.
a. Acoustic ambient noise analyses on the detection of bedload transportation
Two overarching interests in this project: First, to raise a high-quality, long-term dataset on bedload dynamics and threshold of motion. This will be unique for the typhoon-dominated rivers of Taiwan and can be used to inform local hazard protection measures. Second, use this dataset to investigate how far the extreme conditions of Taiwan lead to similar or different behavior in temporal bedload dynamics in comparison to previous observations and models.
b. Mobilization and controls on sediment transportation from lithologic, biologic, and anthropogenic sources during major floods in mountain rivers.
c. Development of an image-based detection method for river driftwood and flux estimation.
3.Capability and limitation of carbon sequestration of olivine fertilization over various agricultural practices.
The main scope of this project addresses the relation between land use, climatic effects, and the enhanced weathering rate, which needs more detailed and precise observation data to analyze the effect of environmental change on the efficiency of carbon sequestration. Dr. Yang conduct additional olivine fertilization in three standard sample plots with various agricultural practices and monthly water chemistry and the minutes-resolution water stage constrain the result of carbon sequestration.