CAREER: Sea Level and Topographic Evolution (SLATE): Exploring the feedback between sea level and sediment redistribution

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Sea-level changes are of wide interest because they affect flood hazards, reorganize coastlines, influence volcanic eruptions, and reflect changes in climate. The proposed work will remove a barrier for understanding sea-level change by developing a new model that captures the effects that sediment redistribution and sea-level change have on one another. This will provide a new tool for understanding the controls on sea-level change and flood hazards near large rivers, which are home to many coastal cities, of relevance to NSF’s Coastlines and People (CoPe) initiative. These efforts will be paired with four education and outreach tasks focused on sea-level change, including the development of a new university course on sea-level change, training of students in pedagogy and mentorship, public outreach through the University of Wisconsin Geology Museum, and a five-year outreach program to K-12 students from underrepresented groups in STEM. The goal of this project is to improve our understanding of the feedback between sea level and sediment redistribution. Although it has long been known that sea level and sediment redistribution influence one another, the quantitative strength of this feedback remains a matter of contention. The proposed work is aimed at closing this knowledge gap through the development of a novel model that couples Earth’s topographic evolution to sea-level change. This will be used to explore the controls on the sediment-sea level feedback by quantifying the sensitivity of sea-level changes to marine sediment transport, the sensitivity of lowland rivers to sea-level change, and the effects of sediment redistribution on estimates of global mean sea level and global ice volume at the Last Interglacial period, an analogue for modern climate. This will clarify the sensitivity of sea-level change to sediment erosion and deposition—a common feature of Earth’s coasts—and provide a basis for improving projections of future sea-level change. This will support education, outreach, and diversity initiatives through the training of two PhDs students, the mentoring of undergraduate students, and a new five-year outreach program with K-12 students from underrepresented groups in STEM. The project is co-funded by the Geomorphology and Land-use Dynamics Program and the Marine Geology and Geophysics Program.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.