Delayed delivery from the sediment factory: modeling the impact of catchment response time to tectonics on sediment flux and fluvio-deltaic stratigraphy

The sediment flux from a catchment is driven by tectonics and climate but is moderated by the geomorphic response of the landscape system to changes in these two boundary conditions. Consequently, catchment response time and the non-linear behavior of landscapes in response to boundary condition change control the downstream propagation of climatic or tectonic perturbations from catchments to neighboring basins. In order to investigate the impact of catchment response time on sediment flux, we integrated a spatially-lumped numerical model PaCMod, with new routines simulating the evolution of landscape morphology and erosion rates under tectonic and climatic forcing. We subsequently applied the model to reconstruct the sediment flux from a tectonically perturbed catchment in central Italy. Finally, we coupled our model to DeltaSim, a process-response model simulating fluvio-deltaic stratigraphy, and investigated the impact of catchment response time on stratigraphy, using both synthetic scenarios and a real world system (Fucino Basin, central Italy). Our results demonstrate that the differential response of geomorphic elements to tectonic and climatic changes induces a complex sediment flux signal, and produces characteristic stratigraphic architectures and shoreline trajectories. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.