MASTER'S WORK
Montclair State University | College of Science and Mathematics
UPSTREAM PROPAGATION OF SEA LEVEL SIGNALS IN FLUVIO-DELTAIC ENVIRONMENTS: TIMELAGS AND THE DYNAMICS OF THE FLUVIAL SURFACE
As a Master's student in the in the MSU Coastal Dynamics Lab I coupled a mathematical moving boundary framework with existing flume experimental data. My efforts provided quantitative insight into how environmental signals and sea level variations propagate in fluvio-deltaic environments.
See this work in preprint!
and official published in Geophysical Research Letters!
Thesis Abstract
The subsurface architecture of fluvio-deltaic environments holds clues to past climate and sea-level change that can potentially be reconstructed from stratigraphy. A major challenge in inverting stratigraphy is separating the signals of allogenic (external) forcing, such as variations in relative sea-level, and autogenic (internal) processes. Although theories for stratigraphic interpretation rely upon the assumption that the fluvial surface responds uniformly to sea level changes, theoretical work suggests that changes in the relief and curvature of the fluvial surface can greatly influence the propagation of sea level information upstream, and result in geologically long-lived lags in the system response. We test this theoretical result by analyzing flume experimental data for the evolution of a fluvio-deltaic environment under sea-level cycles. We find that the dynamics of the upper portion of the profile are out phase by approximately half a period with respect to the sea-level signal, whereas the nearshore region is in phase. Overall, these results suggest that changes in the upper portion of the fluvio-deltaic surface do not reflect synchronous changes in sea level.
ELEVATE YOUR TOMORROW
In the summer of 2020 Madeline was chosen to represent the Department of Earth and Environmental Science as a grad student in the MSU video “Elevate your tomorrow.”
Masked and otherwise socially distant the cast and crew filmed this video. (Behind the scenes here!)
When asked what she would say to people who tell her “There are more important things to worry about” Madeline responds saying that changes to the environment pose an immense and impending risk to all communities. “By understanding, preserving and restoring our natural spaces we will also protect those human populations who are most at risk.”