Difficulties in Studying Fluvial Biogeomorphological Feedback Processes

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Biogeomorphology is an academic discipline that focuses on the feedback processes between organisms and their environment. However, biogeomorphologists have been mainly interested in revealing the one-way influence of ecosystem engineers on their habitat environment. The present paper discusses why the complete biogeomorphological reciprocity has been studied less often. We first propose a conceptual model that integrates the ecosystem engineering and niche construction concepts. We then present five aspects as to why reciprocal interactions between engineer species and their environment are a difficult to study: spatial scale dependency, temporal scale dependency, species dependency, life cycle stage dependency, and habitat context dependency. These specific difficulties are further demonstrated by fluvial biogeomorphological case studies. Although studying fluvial biogeomorphological feedbacks is challenging, developing a clear understanding of the categorical issues will be the first step to resolving such difficulties.