Scientific Webinars

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.

Svalbard is a paradise for geologists, with high Arctic vegetation-free outcrops offering insights into the geological evolution of the archipelago. The short field season and remote outcrops, however, require a different approach than traditional fieldwork. The emergence of cost-efficient consumer UAVs and structure-from-motion photogrammetry has allowed us to digitize a growing number of Svalbard’s outcrops and openly share these through the Svalbox database. The available digital models are presented in the context of regional geoscientific data, including terrain models, geological maps and subsurface data. As such, Svalbox brings the Svalbard geological paradise also to geoscientists living in the lower latitudes.

Microbial carbonates dominated in the Phanerozoic during times of skeletal biota crises and environmental perturbations. High-relief platforms with steep slopes and margins with microbial boundstone reefs are non actualistic examples of highly productive carbonate systems largely representative of the late Palaeozoic, Triassic and Jurassic depositional record. This review explores the controls on facies character, depositional geometry and architecture of several examples of high-relief carbonate platforms evaluating the responses of the microbial carbonate factory, stratal geometry and platform growth to changes in accommodation.

The absence of known prehistoric underwater cultural heritage (UCH) sites on the inner continental shelf of Australia stands in stark contrast to the thousands of sites revealed elsewhere in the world. Two recent claims – Dortch et al. (D2019) and Benjamin et al. (B2020) – put forward the first in situ (i.e., primary context) marine UCH sites in the shallow waters of the Dampier Archipelago, NW Australia. Each paper argued that the stone artefact scatters are at least 7000 years old and are submerged (D2020) or intertidal (D2019) because of post-glacial sea-level rise. Huge international publicity resulted.
From the data published in D2019 and B2020, we use oceanography, sedimentary processes and geological logic to assess the explicit and implicit assumptions and uncertainties of these claims. We include results of new hydrodynamic modelling, data on coastal erosion and bathymetric data of northern Flying Foam Passage, which together help contribute to a reinterpretation of the sites’ sedimentary settings and the archaeology.
These and similar sites in the region (and elsewhere) would benefit from a thorough appraisal of past and present coastal processes to produce a sedimentologically defensible understanding of site formation processes. Even if the artefacts are not in original position, if investigated appropriately and dated effectively, they would still inform our understanding of process and change and might then inform us about past cultures.

The ongoing global Climate Crisis has sparked a strong interest in climate reconstructions and models of geological periods with high atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
But how much do we really now about the dynamics of Earth’s past climate and coastal ecosystems on the human timescale?
Now that concern is rapidly rising about the catastrophic effect of extreme weather events and seasonality, especially to our sensitive and economically important coastal areas, biogenic carbonate producers like mollusks (clams and snails) rise to the occasion as ideal archives for environmental and ecosystem change at the timescale that matters: days to decades.
In this talk, I will try to answer the question: What can these beautifully preserved shells teach us about the occurrence of extreme weather and seasonality under various climate states?

TBA

Tropical climates, such as SE Asia, can lead to poor exposure and heavily weathered outcrops. Whilst fieldwork can give an important insight into the underlying geology, detailed detrital analysis is essential to fill in the gaps. Here, a combination of light minerals, heavy minerals, and detrital grain ages from around SE Asia are used to try to reconstruct palaeogeographies in an area of complex tectonics.

Submarine landslides are gravity-driven mass movements that occur in underwater slope settings worldwide. Despite their potential to damage expensive seafloor infrastructure such as pipelines or telecommunication cables and to generate hazardous tsunamis, many aspects of submarine landslide formation remain poorly understood. Many studies have proposed that the formation of submarine landslides on seemingly stable slopes may be explained by weak layers within the slope stratigraphy. Our understanding of weak layers, especially their compositional and structural characteristics, however, is restricted due to often limited data availability and resolution. This talk will focus on the integration of datasets at different scales and resolution in order to both qualitatively and quantitatively investigate the role of sediment structure and composition on weak layer and submarine landslide formation.

Investigations in living microbialites are providing significant data that are critical to disentangle the role of the various biotic and abiotic processes contributing to their development. Despite these efforts separating the impact and magnitude of these processes remain a difficult task.
Field and laboratory studies in modern lacustrine environments from the Andes to the Alps show that extrinsic – environmental – factors might have a changeable impact over short periods of time switching mineral precipitation from biotic to abiotic and vice-versa. Such switch may or may not be distinguishable in fossilized microbialites.