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Long‐term evolution of the Old Rhine estuary: unraveling effects of changing boundary conditions and inherited landscape

de Haas, T; van der Valk, L; Cohen, KM; Pierik, HJ; Weisscher, SAH; Hijma, MP; van der Spek, AJF; Kleinhans, MG

Long‐term evolution of the Old Rhine estuary: unraveling effects of changing boundary conditions and inherited landscape Thumbnail


Authors

T de Haas

L van der Valk

KM Cohen

HJ Pierik

SAH Weisscher

MP Hijma

AJF van der Spek

MG Kleinhans



Abstract

The long‐term morphodynamic evolution of estuaries depends on a combination of antecedent topography and boundary conditions, including fluvial input, sea‐level change and regional‐landscape interactions. Identifying effects of such boundary conditions on estuary evolution is important to anticipate future changes in specific boundary conditions and for hindcasting with numerical and physical models. A comprehensive synthesis of the evolution of the former Old Rhine estuary is presented here, together with its boundary conditions over its full lifespan from 6,500 to 1,000 cal. yr bp. This system formed during a period of sea‐level high stand, during which the estuary served as the main River Rhine outlet. The estuary went through three stages of evolution: a maturation phase in a wide infilling back‐barrier basin, a stable mature phase and an abandoning phase, both in a laterally confined setting. The Old Rhine River formed by a river avulsion around 6,500 cal. yr bp that connected to a tidal channel within a large back‐barrier basin. Decelerating sea‐level rise caused the back‐barrier basin to silt up around 5,700 cal. yr bp, resulting in shoreline progradation by beach‐barrier formation until ∼2,000 cal. yr bp. Beach‐barrier formation along the coast and natural levee formation along the river triggered peat formation in the coastal plain, laterally constraining the estuary and limiting overbank deposition, which caused most sediment to accumulate offshore. The abandoning phase started around 2,200 cal. yr bp when a series of upstream avulsions led to a substantial reduction in fluvial input. This induced a period of enhanced estuarine overbank clay deposition that continued into near‐complete silting up and estuary closure around 1200 ad. These findings exemplify how tidal systems, formed in wide coastal plains during sea‐level high stand, depend on antecedent conditions, and how they respond to connection and disconnection of a large river over long, millennial timescales.

Citation

de Haas, T., van der Valk, L., Cohen, K., Pierik, H., Weisscher, S., Hijma, M., van der Spek, A., & Kleinhans, M. (2019). Long‐term evolution of the Old Rhine estuary: unraveling effects of changing boundary conditions and inherited landscape. Depositional Record, 5(1), 84-108. https://doi.org/10.1002/dep2.56

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Nov 26, 2018
Online Publication Date Dec 12, 2018
Publication Date Feb 28, 2019
Deposit Date Mar 13, 2019
Publicly Available Date Mar 14, 2019
Journal Depositional Record
Electronic ISSN 2055-4877
Publisher Wiley Open Access
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 5
Issue 1
Pages 84-108
DOI https://doi.org/10.1002/dep2.56
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1306471

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Published Journal Article (9.9 Mb)
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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
© 2018 The Authors. The Depositional Record published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Association of Sedimentologists. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.





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