See more from this Division: Topical Sessions
See more from this Session: The Mississippi River Delta as a Natural Laboratory for Evaluating Coastal Response to Relative Sea-Level Rise and Innovations in Transgressive Coastal Management: Shea Penland Memorial Session
Abstract:
Recognition of cyclical uplift and subsidence refutes recent widely publicized interpretations of delta stability, and suggests late Holocene relative sea-level curves from the delta region may contain no sea-level signal at all. Moreover, our modeling does not verify Holocene sea-level curves from other GOM coast locations, and detailed study of sea-level change at varying distances from the delta is necessary to test isostatic models. However, our modeling shows that records of sea-level change should vary alongshore to the extent suggested by published data due to the Mississippi load anomaly. More broadly, valley incision and filling is a common fluvial response to glacio-eustasy, and cyclical uplift and subsidence should be common to alluvial-deltaic systems elsewhere. The magnitude and timing will reflect the details of valley unloading and loading history. For the Mississippi, the magnitude and timing of flexural uplift and subsidence in the delta region is directly coupled to the response of the continental-scale Mississippi sediment dispersal system to glaciation, deglaciation and meltwater routing, and global sea-level change.
See more from this Division: Topical Sessions
See more from this Session: The Mississippi River Delta as a Natural Laboratory for Evaluating Coastal Response to Relative Sea-Level Rise and Innovations in Transgressive Coastal Management: Shea Penland Memorial Session