| Kelin Whipple | Arjun Heimsath | Ramón Arrowsmith | Mark Schmeeckle | Enrique Vivoni |
The Earth Surface Processes Seminar (called "Geomorphology Seminar" in the GLG courses list) runs every term, for one unit credit (repeatable any number of times, and we prefer students do enroll) on a different theme each term. The seminar is held in the evening, in recent years always on Thursday evening, 7-9 (or 9:30) each week. The seminar is a causal, no-stress, beverage-in-hand, free-ranging discussion of science and the philosophy of science. Location rotates each week among faculty and student houses.
In a typical session we discuss a single research paper or two short ones. One or a pair of students have the charge to lead the discussion each session. Guiding a discussion, pointing out interesting angles to discuss and keeping the discussion on track are the main tasks. Usually this involves leading the group through the paper, but with an aim to highlighting discussion points rather than a report/summary of all points. Sometimes digging up essential background material from previous papers is essential to either understanding of the paper, or for drawing out key discussion points. Determining whether such ancillary material is needed is up to the student leaders.
Each week the paper to be discussed, the student leaders, and the location of each seminar will be posted here .
Encouragement from Arjun and Ramón.
The theme for this term's focus is "Source to Sink". We will focus on the connection between surface processes, landscape evolution, and the sedimentary record.
Come with us on a journey through Time and Space!| Date and location | Discussion Leader(s) | Reading/topic |
|---|---|---|
| Thursday, September 1st; Casa DiMaggio |
Matt Jungers and Erin DiMaggio | Armitage et al., , Nature Geoscience 2011 |
| Thursday, September 8th; at Kelin Whipple's house: 235 E Dawn Drive Tempe |
TBA | We'll take a step back and consider the Source to Sink (S2S) science plan which is one initiative of the larger MARGINS program. The excerpt is linked below, and more information about the MARGINS program can be found here: |
| Thursday, September 15th, 7-9 pm; at the house of Arjun Heimsath: 3223 E Mitchell in Phoenix 85018 |
Mark Adams and TBA | For this weeks seminar we read one last review paper exploring how basin stratigraphy is influenced by sediment supply & climate change. Allen_and_Allen_BasinAnalysis_pp254_265 Leeder_etal_1998_Basin3-Research_SedSupplyClimateChangeBasinStrat |
| Thursday, September 22th, 7-9 pm; at the house of Arjun Heimsath: 3223 E Mitchell in Phoenix 85018 |
Marina Bravo Foster and Lauren Puglisi | This week, we'll read a paper entitled Large-scale dynamics of grain-size variation in alluvial basins that examines the interplay of various factors causing vertical grain-size changes in alluvial basins using a simple coupled model for sediment transport and downstream partitioning of grain sizes. Paola et al. Basin Research, 1992 Supplementary reading: Allen and Allen, Basin Analysis pp.254-265 |
| Thursday, September 29th, 5pm; at Kelin Whipple's house: 235 E Dawn Drive Tempe |
All are invited! | No paper this week...we're having a party! Please join us in celebrating Roman DiBiase's PhD defense. |
| Thursday, October 6th, 7-9 pm; at the house of Scott and Andy: 941 W Santa Cruz Dr, Tempe 85282 |
Byron Adams | This week, we'll read a paper entitled Significance of channel-belt clustering in alluvial basins that examines autogenic processes in the stratigraphic record. Hajek, et al. Significance of Channel-Belt Clustering in Alluvial Basins, Geology 2010 |
| Thursday, October 18th, 7-9 pm; at the house of Ramon Arrowsmith: 140 E Del Rio, Tempe, AZ 85282 |
Barrett Salisbury and Scott Robinson | This week, we'll zoom into one specific component of basins' sediment routing systems...alluvial fans! For the Densmore et al. paper, we'll cozy up against the range front and investigate the impacts of climatic and tectonic perturbations on sediment flux and deposition in alluvial fans. The authors aim to cast the results of their numerical model in the light of previous observational/empirical studies that evaluated the suitability of metrics such as fan area and slope to invert for tectonic and climatic forcing of erosion in upland source catchments. Since we sent out an email nice and early, we figured it would be worthwhile for everyone to take a look at a couple of supplementary papers as well! The first is a modeling paper from 1995 that played a role in inspiring the Densmore model. Hopefully you'll find the tintinnabulations of Humphrey and Heller as titillating as Densmore et al. did, and they certainly build on our discussion of autogenic processes from last week. The second paper uses a physical model to investigate the effects of sediment flux and water flux on fan slope. It should help our understanding of the significance of Densmore et al.'s model outputs. Our discussion will focus on the Densmore et al. paper, but do take a look at the other two papers as well. Development and response of a coupled catchment fan system under changing tectonic and climatic forcing (Densmore et al., 2007) Natural oscillations in coupled geomorphic systems: An alternative origin for cyclic sedimentation (Humphrey & Heller, 1995) Channel Dynamics, Sediment Transport, and the Slope of Alluvial Fans: Experimental Study (Whipple et al., 1998) |
| Thursday, October 27th, 7-9 pm; at Kelin Whipple's house: 235 E Dawn Drive Tempe |
Matt and Matt | We'll be maintaining our focus on alluvial fans for another week with a study that attempts to distinguish climatic from tectonic signals in some non-numerical, Australian deposits.
Distinguishing tectonic from climatic controls on range-front sedimentation(Quigley et al., 2007) |
| Thursday, November 3rd, 7-9 pm; at the house of Ramon Arrowsmith: 140 E Del Rio, Tempe, AZ 85282 |
Gayatri and Andy | Initially we were going to take a trip to East Africa, but it's been decided that an East Africa rift paper would be best saved until our resident expert (Erin) is back to help lead!
So in lieu of Africa, we'll focus on another region near and dear to many of your hearts...the Himalayas. We'll read two short, oft-cited papers by Doug Burbank that consider basin deposits (prograding gravels and transverse rivers, in particular) in the context of independently constrained Himalayan tectonics. Our discussion will focus on the Densmore et al. paper, but do take a look at the other two papers as well. Causes of recent Himalayan uplift deduced from deposited patterns in the Ganges basin(Burbank, 1992) Thrusting and gravel progradation in foreland basins: A test of post-thrusting gravel dispersal(Burbank et al., 1988) |