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shed i have no time to create one from scratch for a while here s a run down of the week s post a hodge podge of sedimentary research that i m either actively engaged in or interested in jsw 1 sediment thickness in the world s oceans jsw 2 submarine geomorphology jsw 3 experimental sedimentary systems jsw 4 learning about sediment dispersal from the age of single grains jsw 5 sediment transfer from the continent to the deep sea the last post was cross posted over at deep sea news so i would like to thank them they have a great blog you should check it out these posts are not comprehensive reviews of the topics with extensive lists of references and such for anyone that is interested in more feel free to post a comment and i d be happy to get some more information to you finally thanks to the folks at just science for making this happen visit or something in the future for ramblings of earth science stories commentary and or rants about science abuse random nonsense or something posted by brianr at 2 10 2007 4 comments friday february 09 2007 jsw 5 sediment transfer from the continent to the deep sea this is post 5 for just science week today s installment is also cross posted over at deep sea news today as we all know the deep sea contains fantastic records of ancient oceanic conditions the deep sea also holds clues about the continents in this case we can use deep sea sediments to better understand how earth surface systems respond to climatic fluctuations the inherent relief between continental and ocean plates drives the transfer of sediment from the shoreline to the deep ocean a grain of sand lodged from a decomposing rock in the mountains may spend a long time making its way down a river system or being swashed around at the coast but ultimately the deep sea is the final resting place in other words this is as low as it can go combine this with a high volume of sediment over time and the result is an accumulation sometimes several kilometers thick for geologists to examine studies of sediment transfer within this context has been coined source to sink and involve the integration of several earth science disciplines including sedimentology geomorphology hydrology mineralogy petrology geochemistry marine geophysics and others a big chunk of my current research is a collaborative source to sink project between stanford university and the u s geological survey we are focused on the sediment records housed in the deep marine basins of the california continental borderland region offshore southern california image at top of post the wrenching effects of the san andreas transform fault system have created a highly segmented seascape with valleys ridges mountains some of which stick out as islands and deep basins using multibeam bathymetry seismic reflection profiles and core samples we can map the distribution and flux of continentally derived sediment in these basins the image above is a seismic reflection profile from the santa monica basin showing the nature of the basin fill 2 high resolution mapping of the sea floor reveals a complex geomorphology complete with canyons leveed channels and fans the image below is a perspective image 3 of hueneme submarine canyon the main sediment feeder to this basin so what are we finding out in these studies a radiocarbon dated ocean drilling project core in santa monica basin is tied to the seismic reflection survey providing time constraints to the maps of sediment distribution we then calculated the volumes of sediment that had accumulated over the last 7 000 years the average flux over this time is approximately 3 million tons of sediment per year which is a lot but more interesting than the absolute numbers is the variability of this rate at shorter time scales hundreds of years a couple thousand years ago the sediment flux rate increases by a factor of five and is then much more variable from then on what is causing this variability in flux this is the primary question we are working on now some paleoclimate records for the california coast 4 indicate a shift from weaker and fewer el niño s to stronger and more frequent el niño s around this same time since the main source of sediment to this basin is a river we can begin to connect these climatic fluctuations directly to the record of sediment flux these preliminary results are from a recent presentation at the agu conference 5 in december 2006 this study will be submitted for publication soon ultimately the record of sediment transfer that is stored in the deep sea modern or ancient will tell us a great deal about what was happening on the continent regarding the interactions of tectonism climate and earth surface processes references 1 perspective image created in geomapapp a fantastic freeware program for exploring the world s bathymetric database download here http www marine geo org geomapapp 2 normark w r d j w piper and r sliter 2006 sea level and tectonic control of middle to late pleistocene turbidite systems in santa monica basin offshore california sedimentology v 53 p 867 897 explore this dataset online at http pubs usgs gov of 2006 1180 index html 3 bathymetry of the northeastern channel islands http walrus wr usgs gov pacmaps ci persp html 4 barron j a l huesser t herbert and m lyle 2003 high resolution climatic evolution of coastal northern california during the past 16 000 years paleoceanography v 18 no 1 4 romans b w and normark w r 2006 distribution and rates of terrigenous sediment accumulation on the hueneme submarine fan in the late holocene 4 3 ka present santa monica basin california agu december 2006 meeting posted by brianr at 2 09 2007 4 comments labels geology marine science sea floor image turbidites wednesday february 07 2007 jsw 4 learning about sediment dispersal from the age of single grains this is post 4 of 5 for just science week feb 5th 9th earlier posts this week post 1 sediment thickness in world s oceans post 2 submarine geomorphology post 3 experimental sedimentary systems if i could talk to the sand grains in an ancient sedimentary deposit i guess i already do so more accurately if they could hear me i would ask where did you come from where were you born and where did you grow up did you travel a lot before coming here if the sand grain could provide answers we could then start to reconstruct the source areas of ancient sedimentary environments with great accuracy mountain belts get eroded that material ends up as sediment if you wanna learn something about ancient mountain belts look at the sediments that they produced zircons can in some cases answer some of these questions of provenance albeit often with a lot of inference and interpretation but hey that s what we do for example we can extract these little suckers from a sandstone which is laborious and tedious process in and of itself i ll go into that another time and then determine their age using radiometric dating i am not even close to an expert on geochronometry for this i refer you to another geo blog apparent dip which has posts about this subject from time to time so what do you do with the age of a zircon that is in a sedimentary deposit typically you date a bunch of grains 50 100 and end up with a distribution of ages some are old some are young here s an analogy let s say you have a few dollars of change in your pocket although they are all in your pocket now the deposit they probably have different dates on them and are of different morphologies if they are all the same that s a pretty special situation we end up plotting the ages in a histogram and analyze the different groupings of ages if we are lucky we already know something about the potential source area and see if we can make some comparisions if it hasn t been completely eroded and or consumed in some way me and some colleagues presented some preliminary data last year at a geology meeting held in mendoza argentina called backbone of the americas the figure below is an example of one of these histograms these plots are preliminary and do not include the requisite error bars number of grains considered statistically significant etc but are posted here as an example of the application stay tuned for actual interpretations and results in the future on the x axis is age in millions of years and relative probability on the y axis these four different plots are from different stratigrpahic units within a preserved sedimentary basin oldest deposits on bottom a thorough comparison of significant peaks i e lots of grains of similar age from plot to plot can help us identify trends one pattern in this particular example is the introduction of younger zircons the peaks around 80 ma in the three upper plots as compared to the bottom one in this case the depositional age is very close to the youngest zircons here because the basin was fed by a volcanic arc so the younger depositional units were receiving new baby or toddler zircons as sediment anyway this is just the tip of the iceberg i ll post again about this and provide links from my fellow geo bloggers out there who do more of this kind of work are can probably explain it better if you want to know the ghory details of this preliminary dataset you can read the abstract pdf posted by brianr at 2 07 2007 2 comments labels geology jsw 3 experimental sedimentary systems this is the third post for the just science week feb 5th 9th see monday s and tuesday s posts on the first post for this week i said i would stay within a theme of deep marine sedimentation well i m gonna break from that for this post just because the topic today is just that cool for a few years i ve been following the work at the st anthony falls labratory university of minnesota in minneapolis and a good friend of mine who works there was kind enough to give us a tour in december this place does all sorts of cool stuff like super cavitation research but here i m gonna show you a few images from their experimental set ups for studying sedimentation so basically what we got here are some very sharp scientists who have taken playing in a sandbox to the ultimate level they have two main experimental tanks that interest me the most a delta basin and the experimental earthscape basin or jurassic tank the above image is a deposit growing in the delta basin remember this is just a couple meters across these experiments run for weeks and they photograph at equal time increments so they can make a time lapse movie at the end to see the evolution of the system but the real beauty of this is the quantitative information at other increments during the run time they scan the deposit with an extremely precise laser and collect data about the topography of the feature as the deposit is buried by further deposition they can relate this information to patterns of river avulsion and lobe switching identified in natural systems the image to the right is a plan view image from jurassic tank which is an experimental basin a few meters wide by a few meters long what makes it unique is its ability to create differential subsidence in almost any imaginable pattern the basement of the basin is actually an interlocking framework of numerous plates that each move independently from each other with this they can run experiments with similar subsidence patterns that are seen in earth s sedimentary basins and like the delta basin the progress of the filling is scrutinized and measured at the end the entire basin fill is carefully sliced centimeter by centimeter and high res photos are taken of the cross section the goal is to then relate the explicit knowledge of the sedimentation to the resultant stratigraphy in the real world we typically only have the stratigraphy remaining and it s up to geologists to interpret the processes that generated it these experiments are helping us think in different ways regarding what actually controls the patterns we observe and map in stratigraphy check out their web resources st anthony falls lab safl is part of national center for earth surface dynamics nced nced research projects a link to some movies data repository for the stratigraphy experiments this short article from science in 2000 does a much better job at explaining the goals of particular research projects utilizing these facilities note you ll probably need a university or personal license to download science 17 march 2000 vol 287 no 5460 pp 1912 1915 posted by brianr at 2 07 2007 0 comments labels geology misc science stratigraphy tuesday february 06 2007 space junk and ring of debris i had to interrupt the jsw just science week posts because i wanted to show this quite striking graphic of space junk around our planet from the new york times the red ring of debris is from the recent satellite destruction shenanigans by the chinese who s brilliant idea was that click on the above image to see full size and then go here to view the interactive feature at new york times website posted by brianr at 2 06 2007 0 comments labels misc science monday february 05 2007 jsw 2 submarine geomorphology this is the second post for the just science week feb 5th 9th on or something see the first post here from usgs see more here the resolution and coverage of both sea floor mapping and subsurface seismic reflection technology has grown by leaps and bounds over the last couple of decades the above image is a perspective image of the los angeles california area onshore topography and offshore bathymetry note the relatively flat continental shelf green very defined shelf edge and variably steep continental slope leading to the deep sea dark purple the shelf edge and shelf is incised by submarine canyons that deliver terrigenous i e derived from continent sediment to the deep ocean many of these canyons and channels are sitting out at the shelf edge and are inactive now during last glacial maximum 18 000 years ago sea levels were much lower and the shoreline was essentially at the shelf edge some of these canyons are still active at present however on friday of this week i will have a post about research i ve been doing recently studying the flux of terrigenous sediment to one of these basins get original image here this next image above is a map view of the bathymetry offshore of monterey california please check out mbari s website for more great images of the sea floor monterey bay is in the upper right of the image with the head of monterey submarine canyon smack dab in the middle between santa cruz to the north and the town of monterey to the south monterey canyon is a huge feature follow it out seaward and the canyon transitions into a submarine channel with a beautiful meander that s barely on this image the distance from the canyon head to that meander called shepherd meander is approximately 125 km 75 mi to give you a sense of scale the water depth at that meander is approximately 3400 m 11 150 ft monterey canyon is one of the most studied and well monitored submarine canyons in the world...