SOURCE TO SINK STUDIES, June 2000
"Continental margins and the sediment dispersal systems that both traverse and shape them are inhabited by a large fraction of the worldıs population. In the United States alone some 80% of the population is estimated to live within 100 km of the coastline. Continental margins are subject to environmental hazards such as earthquakes, tsunamis, floods and landslides. In addition such factors as pollution and coastal erosion present threats to sustainable development along margins. These zones also contain important resources such as hydrocarbon fuels, groundwater and agricultural lands as well as coastal wetlands, fisheries and marine algae."Source to Sink Workshop Summary, November 1999
Newsletter No. 4 cover article written by Neal Driscoll and Charles Nittrouer
"A four-day meeting funded by NSF and JOI was held at Lake Quinault, WA, on Sept 28-October 1, 1999 to create the science plan for the MARGINS sedimentology and stratigraphy community. The science plan will suggest important directions for future research, recommend strategies for accomplishing this research, and will consider candidate sites for detailed interdisciplinary studies in light of the site criteria accepted at the workshop (and described below). The science plan is expected to provide a blueprint for taking geomorphologic, sedimentary and stratigraphic processes to a substantially higher level of understanding. The research goal is to discern the relationships among processes relevant to sediment production, transport, accumulation, and preservation on margins at multiple temporal and space scales, from turbulence to tectonics and from sedimentary fabric to sequence stratigraphy and basin analysis."
Candidate Focus Areas
BRAZOS / COLORADO
http://zephyr.rice.edu/department/students/tonio/margins/margins.htmlNEW GUINEA/Northern Australia
http://www.vims.edu/marginsNEW ZEALAND
http://www.indstate.edu/gomez/margins.htmlNICARAGUAN CARIBBEAN
http://busycon.csi.lsu.edu/Allied Areas
SE Alaska
http://depts.washington.edu/qrc/marginsALBERTA BASIN
Site Selection Criteria and Evaluation Form
The Lake Quinault meeting employed a systems approach to examine coupled land and ocean environments (from mountain tops across shorelines to abyssal plains) and because site selection is an integral part of the MARGINS strategy, substantial discussion was devoted to producing a list of important criteria.
The evaluation form is now disabled. The last date to submit your evaluation was December 24, 1999.
AGU MARGINS Sediment Stratigraphy Meeting, December 1999
Evening meeting to be held at the 1999 AGU Fall meeting in San Francisco, CA
Monday, December 13, 1999, Moscone Center 120 5:30-8:00pm
Convenors are Charles Nittrouer and Neal Driscoll
Source to Sink Article, June 1999
"Source to Sink" written by Charles Nittrouer and Neal Driscoll
"Margins are the principal locus of sediment accumulation on Earth. The pathways followed by sediments on their journey from source to a sink (e.g., hill-slope erosion, river transport, biological production, temporary storage, seabed burial) have major impacts on the lives and livelihoods of people worldwide, ranging from natural hazards, to pollutant transport, shoreline erosion, and resource preservation. The eventual sinks for sediments are in carbonate and/or siliciclastic depositional settings, where their fate is determined by diverse factors (e.g., sea level, tectonics, climate, sediment supply, ocean hydrodynamics) that control sediment deposition and burial. The resultant stratigraphy on margins is a tape recording of Earth history, but the fidelity with which the stratigraphy records processes occurring on Earth is variable..... "