Reconstructing relative flooding intensities responsible for hurricane-induced deposits from Laguna Playa Grande, Vieques, Puerto Rico

Woodruff, Jonathan D.; Donnelly, Jeffrey P.; Mohrig, David; Geyer, W R

doi:10.1130/g24731a.1

Cited by 125 publications

(147 citation statements)

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“…Although varying due to climatic forcing, recurrence intervals at these sites have been reported as being between 150 and 300 years Fearn, 1993, 2000;Woodruff et al, 2008;Wallace and Anderson, 2010;Brandon et al, 2013). This time interval is significantly longer than is generally considered for a reef to recover to its pre-storm state, estimated to be as much as 50-70 years for healthy reefs (Stoddart, 1974;Pearson, 1981;Dollar and Tribble, 1993).…”

Section: Destruction-recovery Cyclementioning

confidence: 99%

Retrograde Accretion of a Caribbean Fringing Reef Controlled by Hurricanes and Sea-level Rise

Blanchon

Richards²,

Bernal

et al. 2017

Front. Earth Sci.

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Predicting the impact of sea-level (SL) rise on coral reefs requires reliable models of reef accretion. Most assume that accretion results from vertical growth of coralgal framework, but recent studies show that reefs exposed to hurricanes consist of layers of coral gravel rather than in-place corals. New models are therefore needed to account for hurricane impact on reef accretion over geological timescales. To investigate this geological impact, we report the configuration and development of a 4-km-long fringing reef at Punta Maroma along the northeast Yucatan Peninsula. Satellite-derived bathymetry (SDB) shows the crest is set-back a uniform distance of 315 ±15 m from a mid-shelf slope break, and the reef-front decreases 50% in width and depth along its length. A 12-core drill transect constrained by multiple 230 Th ages shows the reef is composed of an ∼2-m thick layer of coral clasts that has retrograded 100 m over its back-reef during the last 5.5 ka. These findings are consistent with a hurricane-control model of reef development where large waves trip and break over the mid-shelf slope break, triggering rapid energy dissipation and thus limiting how far upslope individual waves can fragment corals and transport clasts. As SL rises and water depth increases, energy dissipation during wave-breaking is reduced, extending the clast-transport limit, thus leading to reef retrogradation. This hurricane model may be applicable to a large sub-set of fringing reefs in the tropical Western-Atlantic necessitating a reappraisal of their accretion rates and response to future SL rise.

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Section: Destruction-recovery Cyclementioning

confidence: 99%

Retrograde Accretion of a Caribbean Fringing Reef Controlled by Hurricanes and Sea-level Rise

Blanchon

Richards²,

Bernal

et al. 2017

Front. Earth Sci.

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“…Of the less intense storms (categories 1 and 2) only hurricane Betsy (1956) correlates well with the third deposit. However, an analysis of wind damage in eastern Puerto Rico for this particular storm indicates wind speeds more consistent with category 3 intensity' 2 . In contrast to the three layers in LPG12, only two layers are preserved in the upper 15 cm of LPG4.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(1) What are the mechanisms that determine the spatial distribution of overwash sediment in backbarrier environments during periods of coastal inundation?, (2) How can knowledge of these mechanisms be employed to reconstruct flow conditions during individual hurricane events, and evaluate changes in local flooding intensity at a site over time?, (3) Do geographic and temporal trends exist within tropical cyclone-induced overwash records over the later Holocene?, and (4) Are these trends statistically significant when considering the random variance in storm-strikes to a limited number of locations?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tropical cyclones within the sedimentary record : analyzing overwash deposition from event to millennial timescales

Woodruff¹

2009

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Tropical cyclone activity over the last 5000 years is investigated using overwash sediments from coastal lagoons on the islands of Vieques, Puerto Rico and Koshikijima, Japan. A simple sediment transport model can reproduce the landward fining deposits observed at Vieques, and reveals that although the record exhibits centennial-tomillennial changes in hurricane overwash frequency, the magnitude of these flooding events has remained relatively constant. Stochastic simulations of hurricane overwash show that breaks in activity at Vieques are extremely long and unlikely to occur under the current hurricane climatology and the present barrier morphology. Periods of less frequent hurricane deposition at Vieques are contemporaneous with intervals of increased El Nifio occurrences and reduced precipitation in West Africa, suggesting a dominant influence by these two climatic phenomena. Hiatuses in overwash activity between 3600-to-2500 and 1000-500 years ago are longer than what is generated by overwash simulations under a constant El Niflo-like state, indicating that mechanisms in addition to variability in the El Nifio/Southern Oscillation are required to completely produce the overwash variability at Vieques. Periods of low overwash activity at Vieques are concurrent with increased overwash activity at Kamikoshiki and may indicate a correspondence between tropical cyclone activity in the western Northern Atlantic and the western North Pacific.Thesis Supervisor:Jeffrey P. Donnelly Title:Associate Scientist, Department of Geology and Geophysics Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution AcknowledgementsAbove all, I would like to thank my advisor Jeff Donnelly. I have been extremely fortunate to have had Jeff as an advisor, and am indebted to him for his unwavering support over the course of my dissertation, both professionally and personally. I admire Jeff greatly for his scientific enthusiasm, insight, and generosity, and will always consider him a strong role model throughout my academic career. I am also grateful to Rocky Geyer, whose mentorship extends back over 14 years to when he first took me on as a Summer Student Fellow at WHOI. Rocky's help and guidance since I arrived in Woods Hole has been invaluable and I sincerely appreciate everything he has done for me. I would also like to thank David Mohrig who had been generous with both his ideas and expertise, especially with respect to the inverse modeling work described in Chapter 3, which builds upon previously unpublished research of his. Most of Chapter 4 would not have been possible without the help of Kerry Emanuel who has been extremely gracious both with his time, knowledge, and resources. I also thank Delia Oppo whose door was always open to me, and Rob Evans for agreeing to act as the chair of my defense.In addition to my committee, I would like to thank both the past and present members of the Coastal Systems Group at WHOI who I have enjoyed collaborating with immensely: Andrew Ashton, Katie Boldt, Ilya Buynevich, Zion Klos, Liviu Giosan, Maya Gomes...

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“…Thus, geological data offer the best way to reconstruct the historical records of intense hurricanes and tsunami activity (Liu and Fearn, 1993). The most appropriate sites for such studies seem to be the coastal lagoons with sandy barriers, which provide a source of material for transport and deposition as an overwash layer (Woodruff et al, 2008;Yu et al, 2009;and Dezileau et al, 2011). The reconstruction of paleoevents is made by identifying the recurrence of overwash coarse grained deposits and associated contents (Liu and Fearn, 1993;Collins et al, 1999;Nott, 2004;Dezileau et al, 2005;Donnelly and Woodruff, 2007;Scipelly and Donnelly, 2007;Sabatier et al, 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extreme sea events during the last millennium in the northeast of Morocco

Raji

Dezileau

Grafenstein

et al. 2015

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. The Moroccan Mediterranean coast is located in one of the area's most vulnerable to extreme weather events or tsunami hazards. The objective of this research is to reconstruct the historical extreme submersion-event record using sea-induced deposits preserved in coastal lagoon. The Nador lagoon is the largest Moroccan lagoon (115 km 2 ). It is located along the western Mediterranean, which has a high cyclogenetic character and is exposed to tsunamis from the Alboran Sea. The sandy barrier which separates the lagoon from the Mediterranean Sea is marked by much overwash, which indicate how intensely it has been exposed to the adverse sea events through history. Using the UWITEC © gravity coring platform, an undisturbed MC4.5 core (1.15 m long) was successfully sampled in the studied lagoon. To identify extreme sea events, a multi-proxy approach was applied combining sedimentological and geochemical data. Three paleoevents were identified; all of them are concentrated over the last 500 years, and the most recent event corresponds to the 1889 storm. For the others deposits, it is difficult to determine exactly their origin; however, the high frequency of storm events over the relevant period and the absence of historical tsunamis evidence is more in favor of the meteorological origin.

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Reconstructing relative flooding intensities responsible for hurricane-induced deposits from Laguna Playa Grande, Vieques, Puerto Rico

Cited by 125 publications

References 14 publications

Retrograde Accretion of a Caribbean Fringing Reef Controlled by Hurricanes and Sea-level Rise

Retrograde Accretion of a Caribbean Fringing Reef Controlled by Hurricanes and Sea-level Rise

Tropical cyclones within the sedimentary record : analyzing overwash deposition from event to millennial timescales

Extreme sea events during the last millennium in the northeast of Morocco

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