Modelling the links between vegetation and landforms

Vegetation is the most important intermediate through which climate and land use modify geomorphological processes and landforms. In this paper we explore three types of model which attempt to simulate the links to uncultivated vegetation, all sharing a common basis in hydrology. The first simulates the relationship between climate, vegetation and erosion rates for a fixed topography and soil cover. The second group of models takes into account longer term interactions with soil properties, which are thought to be important on the times scales of current concern with global change. An expanded illustration of this interaction is the relationship between wash erosion processes, vegetation cover and the evolution of microtopography. The third group of models looks at geological time spans, for which consistent differences in vegetation and landform between climatic areas create responses in the pattern of erosion rates, jointly to a combination of past and present climates.     

Time-scales of assembly and thermal history of a composite felsic pluton: constraints from the Emerald Lake area, northern Canadian Cordillera, Yukon

Knowledge of the time-scales of emplacement and thermal history during assembly of composite felsic plutons in the shallow crust are critical to deciphering the processes of crustal growth and magma chamber development. Detailed petrological and chemical study of the mid-Cretaceous, composite Emerald Lake pluton, from the northern Canadian Cordillera, Yukon Territory, coupled with U–Pb and ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar geochronology, indicates that this pluton was intruded as a series of magmatic pulses. Intrusion of these pulses produced a strong petrological zonation from augite syenite, hornblende quartz syenite and monzonite, to biotite granite. Our data further indicate that multiple phases were emplaced and cooled to below the mineral closure temperatures over a time-scale on the order of the resolution of the ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar technique (1 Myr), and that emplacement occurred at 94.3 Ma. Simple thermal modelling and heat conduction calculations were used to further constrain the temporal relationships within the intrusion. These calculations are consistent with the geochronology and show that emplacement and cooling were complete in less than 100 kyr and probably 70±5 kyr. These results demonstrate that production, transport and emplacement of the different phases of the Emerald Lake pluton occurred essentially simultaneously, and that these processes must also have been closely related in time and space. By analogy, these results provide insights into the assembly and petrogenesis of other complex intrusions and ultimately lead to an understanding of the processes involved in crustal development.     

The physical scale modelling of braided alluvial architecture and estimation of subsurface permeability

The quantitative modelling of fluvial reservoirs, especially in the stages of enhanced oil recovery, requires detailed three‐dimensional data at both the scale of the channel belt and within‐channel. Although studies from core, analogue outcrop and modern environments may partially meet these needs, they often cannot provide detail on the smaller‐scale (i.e. channel‐scale) heterogeneity, frequently suffer from limited three‐dimensional exposure and cannot be used to examine the influence of different variables on the process–deposit relationship. Physical modelling offers a complementary technique that can address many of these quantitative requirements and holds great future potential for integration with reservoir modelling. Physical modelling provides the potential to upscale results and derive reservoir information on three‐dimensional facies geometry, connectivity and permeability. This paper describes the development and use of physical modelling, which employs generic Froude‐scaling principles, in an experimental basin that permits aggradation in order to model the morphology and subsurface depositional stratigraphy of coarse‐grained braided rivers. An example is presented of a 1:50 scale model based on the braided Ashburton River, Canterbury Plains, New Zealand and the adjacent late Quaternary braided alluvium exposed in the coastal cliffs. Critically, a full, bimodal grain size distribution (20% sand and 80% gravel) was used to replicate the prototype, which allows the realistic reproduction of the surface morphology and importantly permits grain size sorting during deposition. Uncertainties associated with the compression of time, sediment mass balance and the hydrodynamics of the finest particle sizes do not appear to affect the reproducibility of stratigraphy between experimental and natural environments. Sectioning of the preserved sedimentary sequence in the physical model allows quantification of the geometry, shape, spatial distribution and internal sedimentary structure of the coarse‐ and fine‐grained facies. A six‐fold facies scheme is proposed for the model braided alluvium and a direct link is established between the grain size distribution and facies type: this allows permeability to be estimated for each facies, which can be mapped onto two‐dimensional vertical cross‐sections of the preserved stratigraphy. Results demonstrate the dominance of four facies based on permeability that range over three orders of magnitude in hydraulic conductivity. Quantification of such variability, and linkage to both vertical proportion curves for facies distribution and connectivity presents significant advantages over other methodologies and offers great potential for the modelling of heterogeneous braided river sediments at the within channel‐belt scale. This paper outlines how physical models may be used to develop high‐resolution, geologically‐accurate, object‐based reservoir simulation models.