Abstract
AbstractThe stratigraphic record contains unique information about past landscapes and environmental change. Whether landscapes faithfully transmit signals of environmental change to stratigraphy is unknown because autogenic processes, such as river avulsion, can obscure signals prior to long‐term stratigraphic storage. We develop a theoretical framework that predicts when a sediment flux signal will be transferred from the landscape to stratigraphy. This threshold magnitude is a function of signal duration. The magnitude is set by the maximum rate of autogenic volume change of the landscape, which decreases with increasing time window. Physical delta experiments, specifically designed to test our theory, demonstrate that only sediment supply signals with a magnitude greater than the threshold are stored in stratigraphy, supporting our theory. This framework allows us to assess the fidelity of the stratigraphic record to archive past signals of environmental change and predict the short‐ and long‐term impact of current anthropogenic forcing on landscapes.
Highlights
The stratigraphic record is a unique archive of past environmental change (Ager, 1973; Allen, 2008a), but this database is still underutilized because of difficulties distinguishing controls on stratigraphic architecture
Stratigraphy is traditionally interpreted in terms of a volumetric balance between the rate of sediment supplied to a sedimentary basin and the rate of accommodation generated by tectonic subsidence and eustatic sea level change
At time scales
Summary
The stratigraphic record is a unique archive of past environmental change (Ager, 1973; Allen, 2008a), but this database is still underutilized because of difficulties distinguishing controls on stratigraphic architecture. Stratigraphy is traditionally interpreted in terms of a volumetric balance between the rate of sediment supplied to a sedimentary basin and the rate of accommodation generated by tectonic subsidence and eustatic sea level change. Within this framework, changes in climate and/or tectonics can alter the production and flux of sediment through sediment routing systems (Allen, 2017). At time scales
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