Quaternary History of the Coorong Coastal Plain, Southern Australia

Quaternary History of the Coorong Coastal Plain, Southern Australia
Author: Colin V. Murray-Wallace
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2018-04-28
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3319893424

This book provides an up-to-date overview of the Quaternary geological and geomorphological evolution of the Coorong Coastal Plain region and its significance in a global context for understanding long-term records of Quaternary sea-level changes. The Coorong Coastal Plain in southern Australia is a natural laboratory for examining the response of coastal barrier landscapes to relative sea-level changes. The region provides direct evidence of coastal sedimentation during successive interglacials over the past 1 million years, as well as more recent volcanism. The region has received international focus and attracted scientists from around the World, with interests in long-term coastal evolution, sea-level changes, Quaternary dating methods and geochronology, soil development, temperate carbonate sedimentation, karst geomorphology and geologically recent volcanism.

Biogenic Sedimentary Rocks in a Cold, Cenozoic Ocean

Biogenic Sedimentary Rocks in a Cold, Cenozoic Ocean
Author: Noel P. James
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2021-04-17
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030639827

This book documents and interprets the onshore Cenozoic temperate carbonate depositional system along the southern margin of Australia. These strata, deposited in four separate basins, together with the extensive modern marine system offshore, comprise the largest such cool-water carbonate system on the globe. The approach is classic and comparative but the information is a synthesis of recent research and new information. A brief section of introduction outlines the setting, modern comparative sedimentology offshore, and structure of the Cenozoic onshore. The core of the book is a detailed analysis and illustration of the four Eocene to Pleistocene successions. Deposits range from temperate carbonates, to biosiliceous spiculites, to marginal marine siliciclastics. Each unit is interpreted, as much as possible, based on our understanding of the modern offshore depositional system. A subsequent part concentrates on diagenesis both before and after the late Miocene uplift. It turns out that alteration in the two packages is entirely different. The preceding attributes of each succession are then interpreted on the basis of controlling factors such as tectonics, oceanography, climate, and glaciation of nearby Antarctica. This research has revealed new implications for the interpretation of specific attributes of cool-water carbonate sedimentology that could only be discovered from the rock record. Insights concerning cyclicity, reef mounds, biosiliceous deposition, and trophic resources are detailed in the next section. The concluding part focuses on global comparisons, especially the Mediterranean and New Zealand.

Australian Coastal Systems

Australian Coastal Systems
Author: Andrew D. Short
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 1261
Release: 2019-08-29
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030142949

This book describes the entire coast and beaches and barrier systems of Australia. It covers the coastal processes and systems that form and impact Australia's 30.000 km coast, 12.000 beaches and 2750 barrier systems. These processes include geology, geomorphology, climate, waves, tides, currents, sediment supply, as well as coastal ecosystems. The coast is divided into tropical northern and southern temperate provinces, within which are seven divisions, 23 regions and 354 coastal sediment compartments each of which is described in detail in the 34 chapters. Within these systems are the full range of wave through tide-dominated beaches and barriers ranging from cheniers to massive transgressive dune systems together with a range of onshore and longshore sand transport systems. This is an up to date reference for the entire coast, its present condition and likely responses to the impacts of climate change.

Coastal Tectonics

Coastal Tectonics
Author: Iain S. Stewart
Publisher: Geological Society of London
Total Pages: 390
Release: 1998
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 9781862390249

Southern Limestones under Western Eyes

Southern Limestones under Western Eyes
Author: Brian McGowran
Publisher: ANU Press
Total Pages: 430
Release: 2023-09-05
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1760465887

Science, the growth of reliable knowledge, became a major triumph of the European Enlightenment in the seventeenth century, under the guise of ‘natural philosophy’: investigating what the earth and universe are made of and how things work. It took another century for the parallel subject ‘natural history’ to glimpse how the earth, its geography and its richly diverse life came to be. Later, geology and biology became intertwined as biogeohistory—an ever-changing environmental theatre hosting an ever-changing evolutionary play. This environmental theatre has shifted with the making and breaking of supercontinents, the birth and death of global oceans, and the rise and fall of global hothouses and ice ages. The evolutionary play begins with biostratigraphy, wherein fossils revealed deep time and ancient environments and built the first meaningful geological timescale, and ends with the still young science of palaeoceanography—central to which are microfossils, rich in information about the oceans and climates of the past. In Southern Limestones under Western Eyes, Brian McGowran recounts the history of biogeohistory itself: the ever-changing perceptions of rocks, fossils and landscapes, from the late 1600s to the present. McGowran’s focus is southern Australia, the north shore of the dying Australo-Antarctic Gulf, in an era bracketed by two catastrophes: the extinction of dinosaurs and the emergence of humans.

Continental Shelves of the World

Continental Shelves of the World
Author: F.L. Chiocci
Publisher: Geological Society of London
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2014-11-06
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1862396868

The world's continental shelves are the sites of vast resources of food, energy and minerals, the exploitation of which is continuously increasing. Fluctuating global sea levels throughout the Quaternary period produced multiple transgressive and regressive cycles that profoundly affected and shaped these shelves. The complex interactions among climate, sea level, tectonics, oceanography and sediment input have formed distinctive sediment packages on each shelf and provide a guide to the interpretation of older shelf sequences throughout the geological record. This Memoir compiles studies on 23 selected shelves from all the continents, focusing on their evolution and examining the patterns of sedimentation during the past approximately 125 000 years. In addition to providing basic background information for each area, the chapters consider specific aspects of continental shelf research, from seismic stratigraphy to geomorphology, from palaeoceanography to palaeo sea-level reconstruction and from palaeontology to geochemistry.

Sandy Beach Morphodynamics

Sandy Beach Morphodynamics
Author: Derek Jackson
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 816
Release: 2020-05-19
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0081029284

Sandy beaches represent some of the most dynamic environments on Earth and examining their morphodynamic behaviour over different temporal and spatial scales is challenging, relying on multidisciplinary approaches and techniques. Sandy Beach Morphodynamics brings together the latest research on beach systems and their morphodynamics and the ways in which they are studied in 29 chapters that review the full spectrum of beach morphodynamics. The chapters are written by leading experts in the field and provide introductory level understanding of physical processes and resulting landforms, along with more advanced discussions. - Includes chapters that are written by the world's leading experts, including the latest up-to-date thinking on a variety of subject areas - Covers state-of-the-art techniques, bringing the reader the latest technologies/methods being used to understand beach systems - Presents a clear-and-concise description of processes and techniques that enables a clear understanding of coastal processes

Quaternary Sea-Level Changes

Quaternary Sea-Level Changes
Author: Colin V. Murray-Wallace
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 503
Release: 2014-01-30
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0521820839

An important overview of Quaternary climates including detailed Pleistocene and Holocene sea-level changes, for researchers and graduate and advanced undergraduate students.