• Researcher: Marine Prieur
• Host institution: Université de Genève
• Supervisor: Sébastien Castelltort

Objectives:

Rapid global warming at the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) was accompanied by a significant increase in flood discharge in the South-Pyrenean basin and by wholesale disruption of sediment transport patterns. This research aims to focus on the impact of this perturbation on sediment grain size patterns and its propagation in the entire S2S system. This will allow to test coupled models of landscape evolution and sediment transport in conditions of transient response to perturbations and build concepts for predicting S2S stratigraphy at key short-term climate events of the Earth's past.

 

Expected Results:

• ante-/syn-/post-event grain size and paleoflow flow maps at the scale of the entire P-E pyrenean S2S system,
• relative roles of sediment supply and paleohydraulics from downstream grain size fining trends,
• generic models of S2S grain size response to extreme climate change.

 

Secondments:

• Imperial (A. Whittaker) - Analyses of existing and new grain size data and downstream trends (same timing as ESR14 for collaboration on grain size) (2 months)
• University of Bern (F. Schlunegger) - M15 - Paleohydraulic reconstructions and link with WP3 (1 month)
• EQUINOR (T. Somme) - Subsurface data PETM (same timing as ESR 8 for collaboration) (2 months)
• GFZ – Helmholtz Centre Potsdam (J. Braun) - Numerical experiments of S2S perturbations, link with WP4 (same timing as ESR 8 for collaboration) (2 months)