Scientific Webinars

Storm events annually devastate coastal areas around the world. However, instrumental records of these events in many locations are relatively short. This webinar will describe the science of paleotempestology and discuss the climatic implications learned from comparing sites in different regions.

The nitrogenous nutrient in the modern (and most oxygenated) ocean is dominated by nitrate. However, nitrate can be quickly removed during water column deoxygenation. Oceanic nitrate inventory can be greatly reduced during ocean anoxic events. This occurred during the onset of the end-Permian mass extinction and was followed by a shift in oceanic nutrient-N inventory from nitrated dominated to ammonium dominated state. The consequences included a boom of diazotrophs and potentially ammonium toxicity affecting marine animals.

This presentation documents coupled field, analytical and experimental work with a focus on carbonate diagenesis. Case examples range from speleothems to burial diagenetic carbonates. The potential and limits of state-of-the-art experimental work and its bearing on ancient carbonate archives are documented and discussed.

Ocean currents control the growth style of isolated tropical carbonate platforms because surface and contour currents shape the flanks of these edifices. Currents redistribute the off-bank–transported sediment, reduce sedimentation by particle sorting or winnowing, erode slopes, and even are a major driver of carbonate platform drowning. The flanks of isolated carbonate platforms are not only shaped by mass gravity deposits, but equally by contourites with distinct drift and moat geometries which produce specific stacking patterns of platform flank deposits reflecting combined current and gravity processes. This talk will illustrate several examples of such current-controlled tropical carbonate platform systems.

(1) Fatemeh Izaditame, University of Delaware, Climate change impacts on contaminated coastal sediment

(2) Valeria Ruscitto, Sapienza Università di Roma
The contribution of the shallow water record to understanding causes and effects of MECO (Middle Eocene Climatic Optimum)

(3) Matthew Staitis, University of Edinburgh
Accessing the sedimentary record of ocean acidification occur prior to the K/Pg mass extinction

Calcium and clumped isotopes are affected by carbonate recrystallization in fundamentally different ways, and are affected by different factors. Here, they are used to study an evolving carbonate margin (Present day western Bahamian slope), in order to quantify the rate of recrystallization and the degree of fluid flow into the margin. Results show that, with the onset of drift deposits in the Straits of Florida, fluid flow into the margin increased a great deal, demonstrating the importance of larger platform structure in governing the nature of diagenetic reactions.

Meteorite impacts have long been debated as a cause of mass extinction on Earth. When they hit, meteorite impacts load the atmosphere with dust and cover the Earth’s surface with debris. This is thought to trigger ‘Impact Winter’, whereby sunlight is blocked from reaching the earth’s surface leading to catastrophic ecosystem collapse. The bigger the hit, the more severe the effects. But does it really work like that? In this talk I’ll show you that there is actually no correlation between size of impact and extinction intensity over 600 Myrs of multicellular life. Instead, it is the mineralogy of the target rocks that dictates extinction intensity, in particular their K-feldspar content. Weird. To find out how this benign mineral triggers mass extinctions, you’ll have to come along to the seminar!

In this talk I will provide an overview of recent work that has focused on quantifying how ecological changes have altered rates of carbonate production on modern coral reefs and the impacts for reef growth potential under sea-level rise. The talk will also review the options and challenges that exist in quantifying associated rates of reef sediment generation – a sedimentary component of reefs that contributes not only to reef-building, but also to proximal beaches and islands.

The ability to build very steep slopes is a characteristics of carbonate platforms. Microbially mediated fusing of grains and subsequent prismatic early cementation construct the margins of these edifices that are often obstacles for ocean currents along continental margins. Rock fall, margin collapse, slope canyons and slope failures are common features of carbonate slopes but cascading density currents as well as bottom and surface currents also shape the sediment distribution on the slope and in the adjacent basin. Depositional slope models largely ignore the current-related deposition. The talk will illustrate the extreme height of carbonate escarpments and the related processes using the carbonate platforms in the Florida Bahamas region.