The work will facilitate the synthesis and integration of research carried out under MARGINS source-to-sink initiative through an inclusive international conference and the creation of a digital text and educational resources. Knowledge gained in a wet tropical setting (New Guinea and the Gulf of Papua) will be contrasted with that completed in a temperate setting (New Zealand and its adjacent continental margin) in order to resolve fundamental differences in the operation of processes that transfer mass (particulate and dissolved) across the Earth surface. The general goal of the meeting is to articulate the ideas that are the foundation for a holistic understanding of sediment dispersal from land origins to marine accumulation, and to explore the theoretical and observational studies that support them.
A synthesis of the S2S science in itself would be an important resource for the broader Earth science community. Other broader impacts include participation of graduate students and young investigators in the conference, production of digital text for advanced college courses and mini lessons for introductory courses, and inclusion of applied scientists, geoscience educators and others who study the stratigraphic record.
This award funded a Chapman conference hosted by the American Geophysical Union, entitled: "Source to Sink Systems Around the World and Through Time: Recent Advances in Understanding Production, Transfer, and Burial of Terrestrial and Marine Materials on the Earth Surface", which was held in Oxnard, California, 24–27 January 2011. The source-to-sink (S2S) holistic approach examines the dispersal of material (particulate and dissolved) across the Earth surface, with a focus on how the material is transferred between segments of a dispersal system (e.g., uplands, river, coastal ocean, deep margin). A group of 150 scientists and students from 17 countries met in Oxnard to facilitate this synthesis and integration of S2S research conducted during the past decade through the NSF MARGINS program and other programs around the world. Broad participation by the academic and federal sedimentary research communities, energy industry scientists and geoscience educators provided a rich opportunity to explore the many dimensions of S2S research and its impact on society. Keynote and poster presentations highlighted important new insights based on observations of sedimentary systems, numerical modeling and laboratory simulations. Many of these presentations have been made publically available in order to widely disseminate the conference results and stimulate future research interactions(http://csdms.colorado.edu/wiki/Chapman_Source_to_Sink). Some key advances in S2S research over the past decade have arisen from new observations, approaches and conceptual understanding of the linkages and transfers of earth surface materials. For example, the role of climate and rainfall on landscape evolution and sediment production is of first-order importance since exhumation and precipitation rates are directly related. Earthquakes and severe storms are now understood to exhibit a primary control on the magnitude and timing of sediment inputs to fluvial systems in active margin settings. Key observations of sediment deposits in the sink regions of S2S systems have underscored the importance of using high-resolution (3-D) seismic, as key building blocks of the stratigraphic record (i.e., clinothems) are inherently three dimensional in space, and vary through time. Our appreciation of the importance of gravity driven sediment gravity flows in the marine environment represents an important paradigm shift which has changed the emphasis of sediment transport studies. Furthermore, the S2S approach has recently come to the forefront in the area of resource development, as our ability to understand the evolution of margin- and basin scale stratigraphy is necessary to prediction of frontier basins for energy exploration, and also has major implications for water resources, paleoclimate studies, and understanding natural disasters. Future progress for the S2S community presents challenges as well as opportunities for progress. A key to success will be the continued development of linked, predictive models which are able to incorporate climate change, landscape evolution, sea level and storage and transfer of materials through space and time. The impact of humans on a wide range of S2S storage and transfer functions is profound, and we are just starting to appreciate the implications of these changes for society. The meeting concluded with plans for an innovative synthesis volume on S2S research conducted during the last decade, and a collection of educational products for use in the college classroom.
