The Influences of Climatic and Lithological Factors on Weathering of Sediments in Humid Badland Areas

© 2022 Xie, Antić, Nadal-Romero, Yan, Tosti, Djogo Mračević, Tu and Kašanin-Grubin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.Climate variables including temperature, rainfall intensity, rainfall acidity, and lithological properties are among the most important factors affecting rock weathering. However, the relative contribution of these four factors on rock weathering, especially on chemical weathering, is still unclear. In this study, we carried out a series of weathering-leaching rainfall simulations on four types of badland sediments under controlled conditions of two levels of temperature, rainfall intensity, and rainfall acidity based on the real field data from representative weather scenarios. The main objectives are 1) to explore the progressive change of sample surface and leachate characteristics and 2) to reveal the independent effects of temperature, rainfall intensity, rainfall acidity, and lithology and their relative contribution as well, on both mechanical and chemical weathering. Qualitative analysis on crack development and fragmentation of sample surface and quantitative analysis on the leachate volume, pH, electrical conductivity, and total cation and anion releases of sample leachate together demonstrated that for the investigated sediments, under the conditions of temperature, intensity, and acidity of rain that can be achieved in nature, high drying temperature obviously increases mechanical disintegration by promoting the rate and magnitude of moisture variations (wetting–drying alterations), while high rainfall intensity and acid rain have no obvious effect. Impact and importance of the drying process caused by high temperature between wetting events need more attention, rather than high rainfall intensity. Low temperature, high rainfall intensity, and acid rain contributing more hydrogen ions required for cation exchanges, rock type with more soluble minerals, all promote chemical weathering, and the influence of climatic and lithological factors on chemical weathering decreases in the following order: mineral composition> rainfall intensity > temperature > rainfall acidity. Climatic variations on temperature can modify weathering processes and in that way conditioned hydro-geomorphological processes in badland areas. Such changes should be considered for direct and indirect implications on badland dynamics.This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41771008, 51879288, and 41901005) and International Program for Ph.D. Candidates, Sun Yat-Sen University. The study and analyses were supported by the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technological Development, Republic of Serbia (Grant No. 451-03-68/2022-14/200026).Peer reviewe