Rivers 2 Stratigraphy
Explore the construction of stratigraphy through the interaction of channel geometry, lateral migration rate, subsidence rate, and avulsion frequency — interactively!
Imagine there is a river in a subsiding basin. As the river laterally migrates, it leaves behind sandy bar deposits, which are encapsulated in a matrix of floodplain muds.
The river deposits are lowered away from the basin surface by subsidence, they become part of the stratigraphic record (Figure below). Depending on the amount of lateral migration, frequency of avulsion, and subsidence rate, the degree of overlap of channel bodies in the stratigraphic deposit will vary. The movie above shows a vertical slice across the basin width, and a channel (the colorful boxes) laterally migrating across a river floodplain.
The movie comes from an educational module I am working on called Rivers2stratigraphy (
https://github.com/amoodie/rivers2stratigraphy). The module is open source and relies only on Python dependencies.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No.1450681. Any opinion, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.