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Sediment Dynamics (SD)
Ocean margins – structured in coasts, shelves and continental slopes – are geologically and biologically the most diverse marine environments on Earth – and they are the most dynamic. Increasingly humans contribute to those dynamics by the worldwide and rapidly growing use of the oceans for traffic and economic activities, e.g. exploitation of living and non-living resources and land reclamation. Such impacts will be enhanced in the future by the first consequences of the expected climate change and sea level rise.
Sediment dynamics are decisive for the shaping of ocean margins, among which sediment transport, the processes of sediment deposition and consolidation as well as the destabilization of sediment bodies and their erosion play the most important roles.
the Research Area ‘Sediment Dynamics‘ aims to understand the development of ocean margins and the controlling mechanisms at assessing constinuous, cyclic and episodic processes qualitatively and quantitatively on their respective time and space scales.
RESEARCH THEMES for 2009 - 2013:
- How do climate and sea-level changes control continental margin architecture (>100 to 1000 years)?
- Which natural and anthropogenic factors drive short-term (minutes to 100 years) sediment movements ranging from bedform formation to mass wasting?
Applying systematic and interdisciplinary geoscientific research in close cooperation with international partners, these questions will be worked on in the following five research projects:
Sedimentation and sediment transport processes at ocean margins
