The tug of relative sea level change influences the evolution of coastal environments, including land growth or loss and changing river patterns in deltaic settings. Relative sea-level change also influences the architecture of sediments that form continental margin stratigraphy. These sedimentary deposits frequently contain energy and water reserves and can serve as hosts for carbon capture and storage. Improved methods are needed for interpreting and predicting stratigraphic patterns in order to (i) manage these resources and (ii) invert the stratigraphic record for paleo-climatic records, which could inform predictions of future Earth system response to climate change. Recent theoretical work suggests that internally generated processes in sediment transport systems have the capacity to destroy, or "shred", external environmental signals prior to locking them into the stratigraphic record. Through a combination of experiments and analysis of field data, the team will determine the necessary rates and magnitudes of relative sea level cycles for them to be recorded in stratigraphy. This work will advance the ability to recover meaningful data about past climate change from coastal stratigraphic datasets and generate predictive models for coastal response to climate change.
Recent theoretical work suggests that autogenic processes in sediment transport systems have the capacity to shred signals of environmental and tectonic perturbations prior to transfer to the stratigraphic record. Many argue that changes in Relative Sea Level (RSL) represent the most important boundary condition affecting continental margin transport systems. However, we still lack quantitative theory to explain the necessary properties of RSL cycles in order to store them in stratigraphy, thus limiting the usefulness of stratigraphy for defining paleo-environments. Results from previous experiments suggest that RSL cycles with amplitudes less than one channel depth, and of periodicities less than the amount of time necessary to deposit one channel depth of stratigraphy over a delta-top, are susceptible to signal shredding. The team will test this hypothesis using existing data sets and new laboratory experiments. Quantitative theory and predictions produced from this work will be benchmarked against stratigraphy from the Late Miocene to Quaternary stratigraphy of the Mississippi Delta.
