Technical note: Optimizing the utility of combined GPR, OSL, and Lidar (GOaL) to extract paleoenvironmental records and decipher shoreline evolution
<p>Records of past sea levels, storms, and their impacts on coastlines are crucial for forecasting and managing future changes resulting from anthropogenic global warming. Coastal barriers that have prograded over the Holocene preserve within their accreting sands a history of storm erosion an...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Copernicus Publications
2019-02-01
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| Series: | Climate of the Past |
| Online Access: | https://www.clim-past.net/15/389/2019/cp-15-389-2019.pdf |
| Summary: | <p>Records of past sea levels, storms, and their impacts on coastlines are crucial
for forecasting and managing future changes resulting
from anthropogenic global warming. Coastal barriers that have prograded over
the Holocene preserve within their accreting sands a history of storm erosion
and changes in sea level. High-resolution geophysics, geochronology, and
remote sensing techniques offer an optimal way to extract these records and
decipher shoreline evolution. These methods include light detection and
ranging (lidar) to image the lateral extent of relict shoreline dune
morphology in 3-D, ground-penetrating radar (GPR) to record paleo-dune,
beach, and nearshore stratigraphy, and optically stimulated luminescence
(OSL) to date the deposition of sand grains along these shorelines.
Utilization of these technological advances has recently become more
prevalent in coastal research. The resolution and sensitivity of these
methods offer unique insights on coastal environments and their relationship
to past climate change. However, discrepancies in the analysis and
presentation of the data can result in erroneous interpretations. When
utilized correctly on prograded barriers these methods (independently or in
various combinations) have produced storm records, constructed sea-level
curves, quantified sediment budgets, and deciphered coastal evolution.
Therefore, combining the application of GPR, OSL, and Lidar (GOaL) on one
prograded barrier has the potential to generate three detailed records of
(1) storms, (2) sea level, and (3) sediment supply for that coastline.
Obtaining all three for one barrier (a GOaL hat-trick) can provide valuable
insights into how these factors influenced past and future barrier evolution.
Here we argue that systematically achieving GOaL hat-tricks on some of the
<span class="inline-formula">300+</span> prograded barriers worldwide would allow us to disentangle local
patterns of sediment supply from the regional effects of storms or global
changes in sea level, providing for a
direct comparison to climate proxy records. Fully realizing this aim requires
standardization of methods to optimize results. The impetus for this
initiative is to establish a framework for consistent data collection and
analysis that maximizes the potential of GOaL to contribute to climate change
research that can assist coastal communities in mitigating future impacts of
global warming.</p> |
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| ISSN: | 1814-9324 1814-9332 |