A geomorphological, mineralogical, and sedimentological investigation across a modern beach system at Jæren, SW Norway

Project description
Beach systems are important sensor of climate changes and are vulnerable to changes in relative sea-level and atmospheric and oceanographic conditions. Studying modern beach systems and their depositional records at annual to decadal scale allows for deciphering responses to changes in these external forcings. Beach systems also constitutes important subsurface reservoirs, hence improved understanding of modern systems may facilitate improved understanding of ancient, fossilized beach systems.

In this study the modern beach system at Jæren, SW Norway, will be investigated through the documentation and mapping of geomorphic elements (such as bedforms at all scales from dunes to ripples), compositional and textural properties (relative abundance of minerals and grain size, shape and sorting), and depositional processes (e.g., wind and wave parameters). The investigation will be carried out by sediment sampling, topographic/bathymetric characterization and mapping and coupling to historical wind and wave data. The documentation will take place at three selected backshore to shoreface transects at Jæren; the Sola, Hellestø and Ogna beaches.

Foto/ill.:

Maryon

Proposed course plan during the master's degree (60 ECTS):
GEOV223 (Quaternary Sea-level changes, 10STP), GEOV241 (microscopy, 10STP), GEOV302 (Data analysis in earth
science, 10STP), GEOV352 (Filed course in reservoir geology, 5STP), GEOV360 (Advanced clastic sedimentology,
10STP), GEOV361 (Sequence stratigraphy and Source-to-sink, 10STP), GEOV364 (Advanced basin analysis, 5STP)

Prerequisites
Preferentially, the student must be experienced with and hold a certificate for shallow diving and should be a member of a local diving club in Bergen or Stavanger area (in order to collect sea-bottom samples). Alternatively, the student will be offered a diving course.

Field, lab and analysis
Geomorphological and sedimentological description at selected beach profiles, sediment sampling, XRD/SEM analysis in lab at GEO.