A new detailed and dynamic model of the Earth’s surface from the last 100 million years may help understand the past and predict the evolution of the earth’s surface.
Climate, tectonics, and time combine to create powerful forces that shape the face of our planet. Add to this the fact that rivers gradually sculpt the Earth’s surface, and what appears to us to be rock-solid is constantly changing. but understanding of this dynamic process has been fragmentary at best..
For the first time, the study, conducted by geoscientists at the University of Sydney (Australia) in collaboration with French scientists from the CNRS, the University of Lyon and the ENS Paris, provides a high-resolution understanding of how today’s geophysical landscapes were created. and how millions of tons of sediment have flowed into the oceans. The findings are published in Science.
Lead author Dr Tristan Salles, from the University of Sydney’s School of Geosciences, explains that, “To predict the future, we must understand the past. But our geological models have provided only a fragmentary understanding of how recent physical features of our planet formed“.
“If you look for a continuous model of the interaction between river basins, global-scale erosion and sediment deposition at high resolution for the last 100 million years, it simply doesn’t exist,” he added in a statement. (2)–. It is a great advance. It is not only a tool that will help us investigate the past, but it will also help scientists understand and predict the future.”
Using a framework that incorporates geodynamics, tectonic and climatic forces with surface processes, the scientific team has presented a new dynamic model of the last 100 million years at high resolution (up to 10 kilometers), divided into million-year frames.
Second author, Dr Laurent Husson, from the Institut des Sciences de la Terre de Grenoble, France, highlights that “this unprecedented high-resolution model of Earth’s recent past will provide geoscientists with a more complete and dynamic understanding of Earth’s surface, and most importantly, it captures the dynamics of sediment transfer from land to oceans in a way that until now we have not been able to“, Add.
In this sense, Dr. Salles points out that understanding the flow of terrestrial sediments into marine environments is vital to understanding current ocean chemistry. “Since the chemistry of the oceans is changing rapidly due to human-induced climate change, having a more complete picture can help us understand marine environments“, he states.
The model will allow scientists to test different theories about how the Earth’s surface will respond to climate change and tectonic forces.
Additionally, the research provides an improved model for understanding how terrestrial sediment transport regulates the planet’s carbon cycle over millions of years.
“Our findings will provide a dynamic and detailed basis for scientists in other fields to prepare and test hypotheses, such as biochemical cycles or biological evolution,” he says.
References
- (1) Hundred million years of landscape dynamics from catchment to global scale. Science.
- (2) Most detailed geological model reveals Earth’s past 100 million years. Faculty of Geosciences, University of Sydney.