Construction and Destruction of Coastal Zones in our Changing Environment

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Meeting ID: 932 0137 7630
Passcode: 013011

Presenter

Dr. David Mohrig
Peter T. Flawn Centennial Chair in Geology
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Jackson School of Geosciences
The University of Texas at Austin

Description

Low-relief coastal zones host an outsized fraction of Earth’s human population and its critical infrastructure. On top of this, these coastal zones and connected shorelines respond sensitively to both anthropogenic and natural environmental change. Two factors affecting these landscapes and shorelines are sea-level rise and land-surface subsidence. The consequences of both will be discussed with a particular emphasis placed on recent advances made in measuring subsidence, as well as understanding the unanticipated persistence of accelerated subsidence at many locations following extraction of subsurface pore fluid. While sea-level change and subsidence play an important role in modulating coastal-zone elevations, the patterns and timescales of landscape evolution within these coastal zones are largely set by the creation and evolution of channels and channel networks that control patterns of sediment deposition and erosion that either generate topography or remove land. This seminar will also examine the properties of two styles of conduits routing sediment across these surfaces: (1) channel networks within coastal drainage basins and (2) washover/washout channels cut by landward or seaward-directed storm surge. Understanding their structures is important when interpreting the long-term development of these coastal systems and when assessing risks in coastal zones that are vulnerable to the combined effects of coastal, riverine, and pluvial flooding.