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ANNOUNCEMENT

Climatic Controls on Continental Erosion and Sediment

Transport: CLAST2019

4–10 August 2019 | Juneau, Alaska, USA
www.geosociety.org/penrose

CONVENERS Although it has typically been argued that stronger precipita-
Tara N. Jonell, The University of Queensland, School of Earth and tion results in faster bedrock erosion, this relationship can be
Environmental Sciences, St. Lucia, Australia, t.jonell@uq.edu.au much more complex in many systems. This is because the simple
Peter D. Clift, Louisiana State University, Dept. of Geology and model ignores factors such as seasonality and intensity/duration
Geophysics, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA, pclift@lsu.edu of precipitation, degree of soil and vegetation development, and/
Jan H. Blöthe, University of Bonn, Dept. of Geography, Bonn, or topographic steepness, among many others. Often, under-
Germany, jan.bloethe@uni-bonn.de standing of several critical processes and their relative rates
Mengying He, Nanjing Normal University, School of Geography and distributions is required to define any relationship between
Science, Nanjing, China, conniehe@njnu.edu.cn climatic change and sediments produced as a result from that
change. Yet, many equations for fundamental relationships in
SPONSORS sediment transport and erosion still remain in the earliest stages
of development. Furthermore, whether the same rules and condi-
tions observed between climate, erosion, and sediment transport
can be applied across different time scales is a source of consid-
erable contemporary debate.
For this conference, we solicit talks that aid in understanding
how climate can drive erosion and exhumation of source ter-
ranes, as well as the earth-surface processes that transport and
DESCRIPTION AND OBJECTIVES deposit sediments in basins. Global Cenozoic climate, fluctuat-
The physical and chemical breakdown of continental crust into ing sea level, and large-scale glaciation have pivotally affected
sediments by solid earth tectonic and climatically modulated our planet, from the physical evolution of mountain belts to the
forces are key steps in many global geochemical cycles. These chemical breakdown of sediments distributed across margins.
processes control the compositional evolution of the continental How do longer- and shorter-term climatic phenomena dictate
crust and, ultimately, the recycling of material back into the upper rates of sediment supply and records of provenance? Sediments
mantle via subduction zones. The products of erosion and weath- are rarely transferred immediately from bedrock to the deep sea
ering are supplied to sedimentary basins within continents and to because of intermittent storage and release. To what extent and
continental margins where they may be preserved, allowing over what time scales do environmental conditions mediate the
reconstruction of tectonic and environmental histories of adjacent periodic storage and transport of sediments between sources and
landmasses through the application of suitable proxies. Although final depocenters? Climatic control over sediment transport cer-
tectonic forces are known to be a strong primary control on the tainly extends to the offshore, so how do earth-surface processes
generation of sediment, this meeting focuses on assessing the dictate the supply, loading, and stratigraphic architecture along
dynamic role of global and regional climate in controlling the pro- margins and into the deep sea? When, where, and how is it pos-
duction, transport, and deposition of sediments to basins over mil- sible to isolate the erosional signals produced by tectonic forcing
lennial to million-year time scales. How does climate mediate the from those linked to climatic processes? And, under what condi-
sedimentary record and under what conditions can paleoenviron- tions and time scales can precise and accurate climatic records
mental and paleoclimatic change be unambiguously deconvolved be reconstructed from sediments?
from the erosional signals preserved in the rock record? This conference seeks to discuss these challenging questions.
There is no doubt that accelerated rock uplift can drive faster We particularly solicit contributions addressing erosion and/or
erosion rates of bedrock source terrains. What remains less clear, environmental change from all earth-surface process disciplines
however, is how erosion and transport efficiency can be governed that permit robust correlation between changes in climate, ero-
by climatic and earth-surface processes independent of tectonics, sion, and sediment transport. Separating drivers and processes
especially when changes in these processes often occur as a con- continues to be difficult, but is much improved in recent years as
sequence of tectonic forcing. field studies are coupled with novel spatial and temporal control

64 GSA Today | May 2019