Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Earth Sciences
Onset of runaway fragmentation of salt marshes
Published: 2021-06-30
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geomorphology, Hydrology, Sustainability
Salt marshes are valuable but vulnerable coastal ecosystems that adapt to relative sea level rise (RSLR) by accumulating organic matter and inorganic sediment. The natural limit of these processes defines a threshold rate of RSLR beyond which marshes drown, resulting in ponding and conversion to open waters. We develop a simplified formulation for sediment transport across marshes to show that [...]
Interplay of seismic and a-seismic deformation during the 2020 sequence of Atacama, Chile.
Published: 2021-06-30
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
An earthquake sequence occurred in the Atacama region of Chile throughout September 2020. The sequence initiated by a mainshock of magnitude Mw6.9, followed 17 hours later by a Mw6.4 aftershock. The sequence lasted several weeks, during which more than a thousand events larger than Ml 1 occurred, including several larger earthquakes of magnitudes between 5.5 and 6.4. Using a dense network that [...]
Knowing the whole world from the top of a mountain: from orderly systematization to complex explanatory systems
Published: 2021-06-29
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Systems Biology
Fast and fascinating changes in views on nature and systems occurred around 1800, for example in the works of Alexander von Humboldt. While Humboldt rarely used the word system, he searched for the pattern-forming forces of nature by gruesome experiments on animals, including himself, and then drew a map of a mountain that became the basis of biogeography. What did ‘system’ mean then and now, how [...]
Paleoenvironmental change recorded in submarine fans: the Eocene-Oligocene climate transition in the Alpine foreland basin
Published: 2021-06-29
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology
The Eocene-Oligocene transition (EOT) was a period of considerable environmental change, signifying the transition from Paleocene greenhouse to Oligocene icehouse conditions. Preservation of the sedimentary signal of such an environmental change is most likely in net-depositional environments, such as submarine fans, which are the terminal parts of sedimentary systems. Here, using sedimentary and [...]
Controls on submarine canyon connection to the shoreline: a numerical modelling approach
Published: 2021-06-29
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Submarine canyons with heads located close to shorelines, known as shore-connected canyons, provide a focussed pathway for basinward sediment transport. Placing greater constraints on the key parameters that control the formation of shore-connected canyons can help us predict the efficiency of sediment export to deep-water under different environmental conditions and through time. Using a [...]
Deglaciation-enhanced mantle CO2 fluxes at Yellowstone imply positive climate feedback
Published: 2021-06-25
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geophysics and Seismology, Glaciology, Tectonics and Structure, Volcanology
The generation of mantle melts in response to decompression by glacial unloading has been linked to enhanced volcanic activity and volatile release in Iceland and in global eruptive records. However, it is unclear whether this process is also important in magmatically-active systems that do not show evidence of enhanced eruption rates. For example, the deglaciation of the Yellowstone ice cap did [...]
Late Quaternary climatic histories from the Hermes Cave, Corinth Rift, Greece
Published: 2021-06-25
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geomorphology, Sedimentology, Speleology
The Greek peninsula is located at the crossroads of several major atmospheric circulation patterns and is consequently characterized by high variability in climatic conditions, making it an important location to examine past climate variability. Over the last decades, the focus of many studies in the region has been to unravel Holocene paleoclimatic oscillations and their impact on the [...]
Rift kinematics preserved in deep-time erosional landscape below the northern North Sea
Published: 2021-06-25
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Tectonics and Structure
Our understanding of continental rifting is, in large parts, derived from the stratigraphic record. This record is, however, incomplete as it does not often capture the geomorphic and erosional signal of rifting. New 3D seismic reflection data reveals a Late Permian-Early Triassic landscape incised into the pre-rift basement of the northern North Sea. This landscape, which covers at least 542 [...]
Emergent simplicity despite local complexity in eroding fluvial landscapes
Published: 2021-06-25
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Much understanding of continental topographic evolution is rooted in measuring and predicting rates at which rivers erode. Flume tank and field observations indicate that stochasticity and local conditions play important roles in determining rates at small scales (e.g. < 10 km, thousands of years). Obversely, preserved river profiles and common shapes of rivers atop uplifting topography indicate [...]
A Multiphysics approach to constrain the dynamics of the Altiplano-Puna magmatic system
Published: 2021-06-25
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Geology, Geophysics and Seismology, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Volcanology
Continuous Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) monitoring (> 25 years) has revealed a concentric surface deformation pattern above the Altiplano-Puna magma body (APMB) in the central Andes. Here, we use a joint interpretation of seismic imaging, gravity anomalies and InSAR data to constrain location, 3D geometry and density of the magma body. By combining gravity modelling, [...]
On the Efficacy of Compact Radar Transponders for InSAR Geodesy: Results of Multi-year Field Tests
Published: 2021-06-25
Subjects: Aerospace Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Compact and low-cost radar transponders are an attractive alternative to corner reflectors (CR) for SAR interferometric (InSAR) deformation monitoring, datum connection, and geodetic data integration. Recently, such transponders have become commercially available for C-band sensors, which poses relevant questions on their characteristics in terms of radiometric, geometric, and phase stability. [...]
Environmental variability at the margin of the South American Monsoon System recorded by a high-resolution sediment record from Lagoa Dourada (South Brazil)
Published: 2021-06-25
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geomorphology, Sedimentology
High-resolution geochemical and sedimentological data have been obtained for a lacustrine sediment record from Lagoa Dourada (South Brazil). Four distinctly different depositional processes were determined: (1) Suspension fallout of fine-grained minerogenic particles transferred via fluvial activity dominates the Early Holocene and relates to open grassland in the catchment area; (2) Activation [...]
Pleistocene-Holocene crustal deformation in the far-Western Himalaya
Published: 2021-06-25
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
We present new Late Pleistocene-Holocene shortening rates across the frontal fold-and-thrust belt, namely as, the Sub-Himalaya (SH) from the far-western Himalayan sector of Jammu. OSL-dated offset/ folded fluvial strath terraces suggest that the intraplate convergence is partitioned among several active structures in the SH. Estimated cumulative Late Pleistocene- Holocene shortening rate in the [...]
Post-LGM glacial retreat drives aggradation in the interiors of the Kashmir Himalaya
Published: 2021-06-24
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Understanding the response of glaciated catchments to climate change is fundamental for assessing sediment transport from the high-elevation, semi-arid to arid sectors in the Himalaya to the foreland basin. The fluvioglacial sediments stored in the semi-arid Padder valley in the Kashmir Himalaya record valley aggradation during ~19-11 ka. We relate the valley aggradation to increased sediment [...]
An autonomous petrological database for geodynamic simulations of magmatic systems
Published: 2021-06-24
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geophysics and Seismology, Tectonics and Structure, Volcanology
Self-consistent modelling of magmatic systems is challenging as the melt continuously changes its chemical composition upon crystallization, which may affect the mechanical behaviour of the system. Melt extraction and subsequent crystallization create new rocks while depleting the source region. As the chemistry of the source rocks changes locally due to melt extraction, new calculations of the [...]