NSF Org:	EAR Division Of Earth Sciences
Awardee:	UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY
Initial Amendment Date:	June 14, 2019
Latest Amendment Date:	June 14, 2019
Award Number:	1904278
Award Instrument:	Standard Grant
Program Manager:	Audrey Huerta ahuerta@nsf.gov  (703)292-7438 EAR  Division Of Earth Sciences GEO  Directorate For Geosciences
Start Date:	June 15, 2019
End Date:	May 31, 2023 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount:	$166,226.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date:	$166,226.00
Funds Obligated to Date:	FY 2019 = $166,226.00
History of Investigator:	Tammy  Rittenour (Principal Investigator) tammy.rittenour@usu.edu
Awardee Sponsored Research Office:	Utah State University 1000 OLD MAIN HILL LOGAN UT  US  84322-1000 (435)797-1226
Sponsor Congressional District:	01
Primary Place of Performance:	Utah State University Logan UT  US  84322-4505
Primary Place of Performance Congressional District:	01
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI):	SPE2YDWHDYU4
Parent UEI:	SPE2YDWHDYU4
NSF Program(s):	Tectonics
Primary Program Source:	040100 NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s):
Program Element Code(s):	1572
Award Agency Code:	4900
Fund Agency Code:	4900
Assistance Listing Number(s):	47.050

ABSTRACT

Sediments and sedimentary rocks record how mountains are built, when climate changes, how sea level fluctuates, and the processes that erode, move, and deposit sediment. This information can inform our understanding of modern Earth surface processes, natural hazards, and environmental systems crucial to sustainable food and water resources. A key location to study these processes is in the Peloritani Mountains, northeastern Sicily, where the mountains are going up rapidly as a result of large and frequent earthquakes. Hillslopes are prone to landslides during both earthquakes and violent storms, sending large amounts of sediment into the rivers. This sediment is transported downstream to a narrow, densely-populated coastal strip, where it spreads out forming a delta at sea level. This project documents episodes of sediment deposition in the deltas and uses computer models to decipher the causative processes. This research will better constrain how the Peloritani Mountain landscape responds to earthquakes, climate, landslides, flash floods, and sea level variability. Results from this work will help inform the local populace on geologic hazards in the region. The project provides support for graduate students, early career post-doctoral researchers, and educational outreach to underrepresented groups at the K-12 level.

This project focuses on the construction of a source to sink landscape evolution model (LEM) informed by sediment yield and rock-magnetic cyclostratigraphic data to explore how quasi-periodic and stochastic tectonic forcings are encoded, shredded, propagated, and preserved in sedimentary archives. With a relatively small drainage area (< 500 km2), uniform bedrock, and a known history of climate and base level variation, the study area offers an unparalleled natural experiment that scales well to a LEM exploring the geomorphic and sedimentologic responses to tectonic forcings in a system with low source storage. The project tests hypotheses that changes in rates of rock uplift on short earthquake cycles to long secular uplift time scales (1) impact the response time and the autogenic periods of the system, lengthening both, (2) impact the grain size and sediment yield of the source independent of, and unique to, responses driven by periodic climate change, and (3) impart unique stratal onlap and offlap geometries, bed thickness, textural, and rock-magnetic variations in the sink, distinct from those imparted by periodic climatic forcing and quasi-periodic autogenic processes. The project incorporates a modeling strategy that merges Landlab in the source to Sedflux in the sink in order to predict unsteadiness in the source sediment flux and the resulting basin depositional architecture for a tightly linked source-to-sink system. LEM predictions are evaluated against lithostratigraphy, rock-magnetic cyclostratigraphy, terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide (TCN)-determined modern and paleo-erosion rates, and sediment accumulation rates in fan deltas determined by optical luminescence.

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.

Please report errors in award information by writing to: awardsearch@nsf.gov.