This special issue comprises a selection of papers on natural and anthropogenic drivers of Quaternary landform change presented at the meeting of the German Working Group of Geomorphology in 2010 in Schmitten. The first paper highlights the anthropogeomorphological legacy of coal mining as regards considerable land sinking in the Ruhr District, Germany. Magnitude, rates and spatial variability of land sinking are estimated using GIS-based modelling of ancient to current elevation surfaces.

A further contribution deals with geomorphological effects of human land use and quantifies erosional effects triggered by sheep and goat grazing in a semi-arid region in southern Spain.

A further set of papers links the application of more recently developed methodologies to the study of natural controls of Quaternary landform change. This includes the use of shallow seismic refraction and electric resistivity tomography to map Late Quaternary glacial and periglacial deposits presenting an example from the Central Pyrenees. Next, a study details the benefits of high-resolution texture and concurrent microscopic analyses to unravel the depositional and pedogenetic history of loess-paleosol sequences in Saxony, Germany. Also, a micromorphological approach is presented to describe the complex depositional and pedogenetic history of late Pleistocene gelifluction sheets in the hilly mountain areas of central Europe. Two studies on coastal processes round up this volume: a reconstruction of past shoreline dynamics on ancient wave-cut platforms using laser scanning and DGPS data to model wave transport; the analysis of recent barrier spit development at the Isle of Sylt, Germany as derived from prospections with ground-penetrating radar and corings.

This volume addresses geomorphologists and Earth scientists interested in geomorphological issues and advanced approaches and methods.