The formation of incised valleys on continental shelves is generally attributed to fluvial erosion under low sea level conditions. However, there are exceptions. A multibeam sonar survey at the northern end of Australia's Great Barrier Reef, adjacent to the southern edge of the Gulf of Papua, mapped a shelf valley system up to 220 m deep that extends for more than 90 km across the continental shelf. This is the deepest shelf valley yet found in the Great Barrier Reef and is well below the maximum depth of fluvial incision that could have occurred under a − 120 m, eustatic sea level low-stand, as what occurred on this margin during the last ice age. These valleys appear to have formed by a combination of reef growth and tidal current scour, probably in relation to a sea level at around 30–50 m below its present position.
Tidally incised depressions in the valley floor exhibit closed bathymetric contours at both ends. Valley floor sediments are mainly calcareous muddy, gravelly sand on the middle shelf, giving way to well-sorted, gravely sand containing a large relict fraction on the outer shelf. The valley extends between broad platform reefs and framework coral growth, which accumulated through the late Quaternary, coincides with tidal current scour to produce steep-sided (locally vertical) valley walls. The deepest segments of the valley were probably the sites of lakes during the last ice age, when Torres Strait formed an emergent land-bridge between Australia and Papua New Guinea. Numerical modeling predicts that the strongest tidal currents occur over the deepest, outer-shelf segment of the valley when sea level is about 40–50 m below its present position. These results are consistent with a Pleistocene age and relict origin of the valley.
Based on these observations, we propose a new conceptual model for the formation of tidally incised shelf valleys. Tidal erosion on meso- to macro-tidal, rimmed carbonate shelves is enhanced during sea level rise and fall when a tidal, hydraulic pressure gradient is established between the shelf-lagoon and the adjacent ocean basin. Tidal flows attain a maximum, and channel incision is greatest, when a large hydraulic pressure gradient coincides with small channel cross sections. Our tidal-incision model may explain the observation of other workers, that sediment is exported from the Great Barrier Reef shelf to the adjacent ocean basins during intermediate (rather than last glacial maximum) low-stand, sea level positions. The model may apply to other rimmed shelves, both modern and ancient. 相似文献
Climate Dynamics - We assess the impact of split-flow blocking in the Australian region on global ocean wind waves using 30 years of high-resolution wave data from the CAWCR wave model... 相似文献
The MECO hydrodynamic model (MECO Technical Report No. OMR-118/120, CSIRO Marine Research, 1998) was adapted for the Torres Strait–Gulf of Papua region at 0.05° resolution. Validation of the hydrodynamic model was carried out against observed current meter data and calculated tidal sea levels. Dispersal pathways of sediments derived from the Fly River, and from a resuspension event along the northern Great Barrier Reef were investigated using an Eulerian approach. Sediment input into Torres Strait is found to be greater during the Trade season by approximately 10%. Wave data were also obtained, and together with hydrodynamic model output, sediment mobility due to currents, waves and wave–current interactions was considered for both the Trade and Monsoon seasons. Sediment mobility in the Gulf of Papua is dominated by wave motion, whereas Torres Strait is a mixed environment of waves and tidal currents. 相似文献
Seagrass communities in the northwest of Torres Strait are known to disappear episodically over broad areas. Sediment mobility surveys were undertaken within two study areas during the monsoon and trade wind seasons, in the vicinity of Turnagain Island, to find out if the migration of bedforms could explain this disappearance. The two study areas covered sand bank and sand dune environments to compare and contrast their migration characteristics. Repeat multibeam sonar surveys were used to measure dune-crest migration during each season. 相似文献
Tidal current and elevation data were collected from five oceanographic moorings during October 2004 in Torres Strait, northern Australia, to assess the effects of large bedforms (i.e., sand banks) on the drag coefficient (CD) used for estimating bed shear stress in complex shallow shelf environments. Ten minute averages of tidal current speed and elevation data were collected for 18 days at an on-bank site (<7 m water depth) and an off-bank site (<10 m). These data were compared to data collected simultaneously from two shelf locations (<11 m) occupied to measure regional tidal behaviour. Overall CD estimates at the on- and off-bank sites attained 7.0±0.1×10−3 and 6.6±0.1×10−3, respectively. On-bank CD estimates also differed between the predominant east–west tidal streams, with easterly directed flows experiencing CD=7.8±0.18×10−3 and westerly directed flows CD=6.4±0.12×10−3. Statistically significant differences between the off-bank and on-bank sites are attributed to the large form drag exerted by the sand banks on the regional tidal currents, and statistically significant differences between the westward and eastward flows is ascribed to bedform asymmetry. Form drag from the large bedforms in Torres Strait comprises up to 65% of the total drag coefficient. When constructing sediment transport models, different CD estimates must therefore be applied to shelf regions containing steep bedforms compared to regions that do not. Our results extend the limited inventory of seabed drag coefficients for shallow shelf environments, and can be used to improve existing regional seabed mobilisation models, which have direct application to environmental management in Torres Strait. 相似文献
Climate models are increasingly being used to force dynamical wind wave models in order to assess the potential climate change-driven
variations in wave climate. In this study, an ensemble of wave model simulations have been used to assess the ability of climate
model winds to reproduce the present-day (1981–2000) mean wave climate and its seasonal variability for the southeast coast
of Australia. Surface wind forcing was obtained from three dynamically downscaled Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP-3)
global climate model (GCM) simulations (CSIRO Mk3.5, GFDLcm2.0 and GFDLcm2.1). The downscaling was performed using CSIRO’s
cubic conformal atmospheric model (CCAM) over the Australian region at approximately 60-km resolution. The wind climates derived
from the CCAM downscaled GCMs were assessed against observations (QuikSCAT and NCEP Re-analysis 2 (NRA-2) reanalyses) over
the 1981–2000 period and were found to exhibit both bias in mean wind conditions (climate bias) as well as bias in the variance
of wind conditions (variability bias). Comparison of the modelled wave climate with over 20 years of wave data from six wave
buoys in the study area indicates that direct forcing of the wave models with uncorrected CCAM winds result in suboptimal
wave hindcast. CCAM winds were subsequently adjusted for climate and variability bias using a bivariate quantile adjustment
which corrects both directional wind components to align in distribution to the NRA-2 winds. Forcing of the wave models with
bias-adjusted winds leads to a significant improvement of the hindcast mean annual wave climate and its seasonal variability.
However, bias adjustment of the CCAM winds does not improve the ability of the model to reproduce the storm wave climate.
This is likely due to a combination of storm systems tracking too quickly through the wave generation zone and the performance
of the NRA-2 winds used as a benchmark in this study. 相似文献
