Using a high-resolution deep-towed seismic system, we have discovered a series of contour-current bedforms at the base of the Sigsbee Escarpment in the Bryant Canyon region of the northern Gulf of Mexico. We identify a continuum of bedforms that include furrows, meandering furrows, flutes and fully eroded seafloor. These contourcurrent bedforms are linked to current velocities ranging from 20 to upwards of 60 cm/s based on nearby current meter measurements and similar flume generated bedforms (Allen, 1969). We identify erosion and non-deposition of up to 25 meters of surface sediment at the base of Sigsbee Escarpment. Using 3-D and high-resolution seismic data, sediment samples, and submersible observations from the Green Knoll area, we further define contour-current bedforms along the Sigsbee Escarpment. The study area is divided into eleven zones based on bedform morphology, distribution, and formation processes. We identify a contourcurrent bedform continuum similar to that of the Bryant Canyon region, while the data reveals additional features that result from the interaction between topography and contour-currents. Three regional seismic marker horizons are identified, and we establish an age of ~19 kyr on the deepest horizon. The seismic horizons are correlated with very subtle changes in sediment properties, which in turn define the maximum depth of erosion for each of the individual bedforms. Finally, we show for the first time that furrowed horizons can be acoustically imaged in three dimensions below seafloor. Analysis of imagery of several horizons obtained from 3-D seismic data from the Green Knoll region establishes the existence of multiple paleo-furrow events. The contour current pattern preserved by the paleofurrows is similar to the presently active seafloor furrows. And, based on the morphology and development that we establish for the active seafloor furrows, we show that paleo-furrows are likely formed by currents that are in the same range as those measured today (20-60 cm/s), that erode into sediments with similar physical properties to the fine-grained hemipelagic sediments of the present-day seafloor. We further suggest the possibility that furrows are formed during inter-glacial highstands and buried during glacial lowstands.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1957. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [68]-71).

Despite the economic importance of dolomitised Upper Cretaceous strata, little work has been conducted to further the understanding of the controls on dolomitisation during a green-house period with low marine Mg/Ca ratio. This study presents a multidisciplinary, multi-scale approach using field, petrographical and geochemical data to understand the mechanism of dolomitisation in North Africa and western Mediterranean in order to determine the controls on dolomitisation of Upper Cretaceous strata. Two field areas have been chosen that exhibit similar facies and are time equivalent, located along the Jeffara Escarpment in southern Tunisia and in the Iberian Range of central Spain. Both areas comprise facies deposited in mid-ramp, platform margin, lagoon, inter- and supra-tidal environments. Based on the distribution of facies, a sequence stratigraphic model was proposed for both areas which show similar changes in relative sea level. In the Iberian Basin there is strong evidence of a dramatic rearrangement in basin architecture resulting from tectonic activity during the Upper Cenomanian, whilst on the Jeffara Escarpment deposition took place on a passive margin. Both areas show evidence of warm, arid climates; even though the Iberian Range was in a more northerly palaeogeographic position, there was a rain shadow which affected facies distribution and dolomitisation. Planar dolomite fabrics, dull luminescence under cathodoluminescence, marine trace element concentrations and marine to slightly enriched oxygen isotope values suggest that dolomitisation occurred from mesosaline, marine fluids. Dolomitisation occurred from multiple fluxes of dolomitising fluids, controlled by high frequency changes in relative sea level. A cessation of dolomitisation only occurred during late transgressive systems tract of low order sea level cycles as a result of platform flooding. The Distribution of dolomitising fluids was partly controlled by pre-cursor limestone with low permeability horizons acting as aquicludes and permeable sandstones acting as aquifers. Changes in basin architecture caused reversals in flow of dolomitising fluids on the Iberian Range whilst increased subsidence caused cessation of dolomitisation due to rapid increase in relative sea level on the platform top. Dolomitisation occurred over a wider geographical area in the Jeffara Escarpment compared to the Iberian Range as a result of higher fluid salinity, larger brine pool and higher temperature of dolomitising fluids. The distribution of dolomitised strata of the circum-Tethys and across the Arabian Plate suggests that early reflux dolomitisation occurred within arid climate belts, and did not require hypersaline conditions, evidenced by evaporite distribution, as previously suggested. This study has important implications for the hydrocarbon industry by improving our ability to predict distribution, size and geometry of dolomitised strata essential for hydrocarbon exploration and field development. Furthermore this study has improved our understanding on the controls on dolomitisation during greenhouse periods with low Mg/Ca ratio of seawater and high frequency sea level changes.

A field and textural investigation of the Medina Formation has been made. The thesis includes a brief analysis of the microscopic sedimentological properties of the sandy facies, a detailed study of the paleocurrent indicators, and a study of the distribution of the more typical sedimentary structures. Analytical laboratory data, primary sedimentary structures, and outcrop data have been used to reconstruct the paleoenvironmental setting of the Lower Silurian rocks exposed along the Niagara Escarpment from Hamilton (Ontario) to Fulton (New York). They indicate a complex of sub-environments within the broad model of a delta, with the direction of current movement being from the South-East in the eastern part of the area under study and from South-West and North-East in the western part. The determination of these two paleocurrent systems forms a major contribution of this work. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This paper was written to explain the conditions existing in Barton Township and to show the relationship existing between the township and the city of Hamilton. The problem was attacked from a land utilization angle. The land utilization map of Barton was produced in January 1950, after an extensive and careful field survey during the Fall of 1949. The physical geography of the township and the surrounding area is described. The historical geography is given because the author believes the historical forces must be recognized in any study of settlement. That part of Hamilton, lying along the top of the escarpment (Mount Hamilton) was included in the physical and historical setting because of its proximity and connection with the area under investigation. Hamilton’s southern city limit is 100 feet south of Fennel Avenue but for obvious purposes, the centre of the Avenue was taken for the boundary line between the city and the township. The main body of the paper reveals the close interrelationships between the city and the township. It is a good example of how a city does not terminate abruptly at its boundaries. This close connection between the city and its contiguous rural municipalities has created an urgent need for planning on a regional basis. Regional planning, if instigated, would help to regulate the future growth within the township and the encroachment of the city on the township. Agriculture and suburban developments would then be on a much sounder foundation. / Thesis / Bachelor of Arts (BA)

The complex and coupled physical processes taking place in the atmosphere, ocean and land surface are described in Global Circulation Models (GCMs). These models have become the main tools to simulate climate variability and project future climate change. GCMs have the potential to give physically reliable estimates of climate change at global, continental or regional scales, but their projections are currently of too course horizontal resolution to capture the smaller scale features of climate and climate change. This situation stems from the fact that GCM simulations, which are effectively three-dimensional simulations of the coupled atmosphere-ocean-land system, are computationally extremely expensive. Therefore, downscaling techniques are utilised to do perform simulations over preselected areas that are of sufficiently detailed to represent the climate features at the meso-scale. Dynamic regional climate models (RCMs), based on the same laws of physics as GCMs but applied at high resolution over areas of interest, have become the main tools to project regional climate change. The research presented here utilises the Conformal-Cubic Atmospheric Model (CCAM), a variable-resolution global atmospheric model that can be applied in stretched-grid mode to function as a regional climate model. As is the case with RCMs, CCAM has the potential to improve climate simulations along rough topography and coastal areas when applied at high spatial resolution, whilst side-stepping the lateral boundary condition problems experienced by typical limited-area RCMs. CCAM has been developed by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia. The objective in the study is to test capability of a regional climate model, CCAM, to realistically simulate cumulus convection at different spatial scales over regions with steep topography, such as the eastern escarpment of South Africa. Since both GCMs and RCMs are known to have large biases and shortcomings in simulating rainfall over the steep eastern escarpment of southern Africa and in particular Lesotho, the paper “Model simulations of rainfall over southern Africa and its eastern escarpment” (Chapter 3) has a focus on verifying model performance over this region. In the paper the CCAM simulations include six 200 km resolution Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP) simulations that are forced with sea surface temperatures and one 50 km resolution National Centre for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) reanalysis simulation that is forced with sea surface temperatures and synoptic scale atmospheric forcings. These simulations are verified against rain gauge data sets and satellite rainfall estimates. The results reveal that at these resolutions the model is capable of simulating the key synoptic-scale features of southern African rainfall patterns. However, rainfall totals are often drastically overestimated. A key aspect of model performance is the representation of the diurnal cycle in convection. For the case of South Africa, the realistic representation of the complex patterns of rainfall over regions of steep topography is also of particular importance. At a larger spatial scale, the model also needs to be capable of representing the west-east rainfall gradient found over South Africa. The ability of CCAM to simulate the diurnal cycle in rainfall as well as the complex spatial patterns of rainfall over eastern South Africa is analysed in “High Resolution Rainfall Modelling over the Eastern Escarpment of South Africa” (Chapter 4). The simulations described in the paper have been performed at 8km resolutions in the horizontal and span a thirty-year long period. These are the highest resolution climate simulations obtained to date for the southern African region, and were obtained through the downscaling reanalysis data of the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF). The simulations provide a test of the robustness of the CCAM convective rainfall parameterisations when applied at high spatial resolution, in particular in representing the complex rainfall patterns of the eastern escarpment of South Africa. / M (Geography and Environmental Management), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

The complex and coupled physical processes taking place in the atmosphere, ocean and land surface are described in Global Circulation Models (GCMs). These models have become the main tools to simulate climate variability and project future climate change. GCMs have the potential to give physically reliable estimates of climate change at global, continental or regional scales, but their projections are currently of too course horizontal resolution to capture the smaller scale features of climate and climate change. This situation stems from the fact that GCM simulations, which are effectively three-dimensional simulations of the coupled atmosphere-ocean-land system, are computationally extremely expensive. Therefore, downscaling techniques are utilised to do perform simulations over preselected areas that are of sufficiently detailed to represent the climate features at the meso-scale. Dynamic regional climate models (RCMs), based on the same laws of physics as GCMs but applied at high resolution over areas of interest, have become the main tools to project regional climate change. The research presented here utilises the Conformal-Cubic Atmospheric Model (CCAM), a variable-resolution global atmospheric model that can be applied in stretched-grid mode to function as a regional climate model. As is the case with RCMs, CCAM has the potential to improve climate simulations along rough topography and coastal areas when applied at high spatial resolution, whilst side-stepping the lateral boundary condition problems experienced by typical limited-area RCMs. CCAM has been developed by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia. The objective in the study is to test capability of a regional climate model, CCAM, to realistically simulate cumulus convection at different spatial scales over regions with steep topography, such as the eastern escarpment of South Africa. Since both GCMs and RCMs are known to have large biases and shortcomings in simulating rainfall over the steep eastern escarpment of southern Africa and in particular Lesotho, the paper “Model simulations of rainfall over southern Africa and its eastern escarpment” (Chapter 3) has a focus on verifying model performance over this region. In the paper the CCAM simulations include six 200 km resolution Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP) simulations that are forced with sea surface temperatures and one 50 km resolution National Centre for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) reanalysis simulation that is forced with sea surface temperatures and synoptic scale atmospheric forcings. These simulations are verified against rain gauge data sets and satellite rainfall estimates. The results reveal that at these resolutions the model is capable of simulating the key synoptic-scale features of southern African rainfall patterns. However, rainfall totals are often drastically overestimated. A key aspect of model performance is the representation of the diurnal cycle in convection. For the case of South Africa, the realistic representation of the complex patterns of rainfall over regions of steep topography is also of particular importance. At a larger spatial scale, the model also needs to be capable of representing the west-east rainfall gradient found over South Africa. The ability of CCAM to simulate the diurnal cycle in rainfall as well as the complex spatial patterns of rainfall over eastern South Africa is analysed in “High Resolution Rainfall Modelling over the Eastern Escarpment of South Africa” (Chapter 4). The simulations described in the paper have been performed at 8km resolutions in the horizontal and span a thirty-year long period. These are the highest resolution climate simulations obtained to date for the southern African region, and were obtained through the downscaling reanalysis data of the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF). The simulations provide a test of the robustness of the CCAM convective rainfall parameterisations when applied at high spatial resolution, in particular in representing the complex rainfall patterns of the eastern escarpment of South Africa. / M (Geography and Environmental Management), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

Erosion, a surface process, can be quantified over long-term (assumed to be the natural erosion rate of the landscape) and contemporary (modern) timeframes. My research used the rare cosmogenic isotope 10Be in sand and cobbles collected from rivers in southeastern Brazil (Santa Catarina and Rio de Janeiro states) and southwestern China (Yunnan province) to quantify long-term, background rates of erosion and sediment supply. These measurements will also increase number of such measurements in tropical and subtropical climates. I assessed the relationship between landscape parameters (topographic and climatic) and background erosion rates in order to understand factors related to erosion. My data from so far unsampled states in Brazil shows that background erosion rates range between 13 and 90 m/Myr. I found that mean basin slope (R2=0.73) and mean annual precipitation (R2=0.57) are strongly correlated to erosion rates. Steep, escarpment-draining basins in Brazil erode faster than lower gradient basins draining the highlands. Comparing the isotopic concentration of river sand and cobbles, my data show that these grain sizes are sourced from different parts of the landscape. I compiled all published Brazilian cosmogenic 10Be data, and compared them to erosion rates from similar tectonic settings. While the erosion rates in Brazil are relatively low, they are similar to those in southeastern North America, but faster than rates measured on escarpments in southern Africa. In China, I tested the human effects on denudation by comparing long-term erosion rates derived from in-situ 10Be concentration and the modern sediment yield of 22 watersheds in Yunnan. Background erosion rates range between 17 and 386 m/Myr; long term sediment yields based on these erosion rates range from 79 to 893 tons km-2 yr-1. Modern sediment yields range from 90 to 2,879 tons km-2 yr-1 (data from Schmidt et al., 2011). In most watersheds, the modern sediment yield is 2-3X higher than long-term rates, likely the effect of a long history of land use in Yunnan. I found a statistically significant, positive relationship between erosion rates and both area (R2 = 0.60) and mean basin slope (R2 = 0.42). There is a negative but strong relationship between erosion rates and precipitation in my dataset (R2 = 0.60). I sampled some places where 10Be samples had been collected before to test the methodological assumption of time-invariant 10Be concentration. Concentrations generally agree on samples taken 6 months apart and in samples from the active channel and from floodplains, but not in samples collected a decade and centuries apart.

Este trabalho consiste no estudo da adaptação da rede de drenagem ao embasamento litológico e estrutural em uma área interplanáltica, mediada por uma faixa de escarpamento. A área-foco da pesquisa é a bacia do ribeirão das Laranjeiras, tributário do rio Juquiá-Guaçu e localizado no sopé da Serra de Paranapiacaba. O principal problema da pesquisa é a hipótese da ocorrência de uma captura fluvial do rio Sorocabuçu, situado em nível de base mais elevado, pelo ribeirão das Laranjeiras. A metodologia partiu do exame de Modelos Digitais de Elevação e mapeamentos topográficos e geológicos anteriores, posteriormente submetidos a cálculos morfométricos específicos. Os procedimentos consistiram da identificação de feições de relevo incidentes na bacia (por meio do traçado do Esboço Geomorfológico e do reconhecimento de lineamentos); da investigação sobre a retração da frente escarpada; e da análise das curvas hipsométricas, geometria e perfis longitudinais dos canais mais representativos da bacia. Em seguida, foram examinadas as prováveis ocorrências de rearranjos de drenagem na área, manifestas por capturas fluviais e decapitações, correlacionando-as com as evidências previamente obtidas no estudo morfométrico. Entre os resultados principais, foi demonstrado que a rede hidrográfica em questão é condicionada por diversos fatores de ordem litológica e estrutural, que terminam por orientar os canais afluentes, bem como o canal principal (o ribeirão das Laranjeiras). Estas estruturas são, em geral, sistemas de juntas e falhas do Paleozóico em direção NE-SW. Entretanto, a bacia é seccionada por uma possível falha mais recente, intitulada Falha de Itanhaém, transcorrente dextral e orientada a NW-SE, que atuou como zona de fraqueza e favoreceu a captura do rio Sorocabuçu pelo ribeirão das Laranjeiras. Por fim, discute-se o recuo erosivo da Serra de Paranapiacaba e sua relação com estas estruturas geológicas e a dinâmica da rede de drenagem local. / This research is a study of the adaptation of the drainage network to a geological and structural base in an interplateau area, which is mediated by a escarpment. The area-focus of the research is the Laranjeiras river basin, tributary of the Juquiá-Guaçu river and located at the footslope of the Paranapiacaba mountain range. The main problem of the research was the hypothesed ocurrence of river piracy of the Sorocabuçu River, located in highest base level, by the Laranjeiras river, on the lowest one. The methodology differed from the exam of Digital Elevation Models and topographic and geological maps, which was subsequently subjected to morphometric specific calculations. The procedures consisted of identifying the relief features in the basin (by tracing the Geomorphological Sketch and lineaments recognition), researching the retration of front scarp and analysing the hypsometric curves, geometry and longitudinal profiles of channels most representatives in the basin. Then, we examined the likely occurrence of rearrangements in the drainage, manifested by river piracies and beheadings, correlating them with the evidence previously obtained in the morphometric study. Among the main results, it was demonstrated that the hydrographic network in question is conditioned by several lithologic and structural factors, which ultimately guide channel tributaries and the main channel (Laranjeiras river). These structures are, in general, systems of joints and faults from Paleozoic, in the NE-SW direction. However, the basin is cut by a possible, recent fault, titled Itanhaém fault, rightlateral strike-slip, oriented to NW-SE. This acts as a zone of weakness and favors carving and capturing of the Sorocabuçu river by Laranjeiras river. Finally, we discuss the retraction of the Paranapiacaba mountain range and its relationship with these geological structures and the dynamics of the local drainage.