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Agents of geomorphic change in submarine canyons

Project description

Understanding changes in submarine canyons

Submarine canyons transport material into the deep ocean through landslides and turbidity currents. The rapid changes they cause can surpass the impact of other processes, leading to alterations in canyon morphology. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the SubCAN project will use acoustic data, sediment cores, and numerical modelling to study the factors driving changes in submarine canyons. It aims to understand margin evolution, stability, and hazards by focusing on two distinct types of submarine canyons: one characterised by low-event magnitude and high-event frequency, and the other by high-event magnitude and low-event frequency. Additionally, the project will reconstruct the evolution of a canyon where high-resolution and repeat data are not available to better understand the universal processes that drive changes in submarine canyons.

Objective

Submarine canyons are dynamic systems that are ubiquitous across continental margins and play a key role in the transport of material into the deep ocean. This transport is primarily facilitated through submarine landslides and turbidity currents, which can mobilise large volumes of sediment at high speeds across great distances. While some submarine canyons are flushed by low volume turbidity currents multiple times each year, others in similar tectonic settings remain inactive for multiple decades between higher-magnitude canyon flushing events. Nonetheless, such rapid change can dwarf the effect of other geomorphic processes, such as biological erosion or bedform migration, whose action over decades or centuries can bring about significant change in canyon morphology and also precondition slopes for failure. SubCAN will make use of a suite of acoustic (multibeam echosounder, subbottom and seismic) data and sediment cores, as well as numerical modelling, to investigate the agents that bring about change in submarine canyons over a variety of spatial and temporal scales. This work has implications for understanding and predicting margin evolution, and will provide important constraints on margin stability and hazards. In particular, SubCAN will (i) Use repeat mapping and monitoring to quantify fine-scale geomorphic changes and processes over up to 25 years in two end-member submarine canyons: one low-event-magnitude, high-event-frequency system, and one high-event-magnitude, low-event-frequency system; (ii) Implement hierarchical reduced-order numerical modelling to model canyon evolution and stratigraphic change in response to the action of geomorphic processes on a margin-scale using those two systems as end members; and (iii) Reconstruct geomorphic processes and evolution of a canyon where high resolution and repeat data are not available to reveal the universality of the key processes that bring about change in submarine canyons.

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-GF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01

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Coordinator

CHRISTIAN-ALBRECHTS-UNIVERSITAET ZU KIEL
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 220 966,80
Address
OLSHAUSENSTRASSE 40
24118 Kiel
Germany

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Region
Schleswig-Holstein Schleswig-Holstein Kiel, Kreisfreie Stadt
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

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