Jacob A Covault

University of Texas at Austin | UT · Jackson School of Geosciences

Channel‐bend expansion and downstream translation, as well as vertical movements by aggradation and incision, set the stratigraphic architecture of channelized depositional systems. Early work on submarine‐channel evolution has suggested that downstream translation is rare. It is proposed here that downstream translation of bends might be common in...

A long-standing goal of sedimentary geoscience is to understand how tectonic and climatic changes are reflected in basin fill. Here, we use 14 numerical models of continental-scale sediment-routing systems spanning millions of years to investigate the responses of sediment supply and basin sedimentation to changes in uplift and precipitation in the...

Submarine channels are conduits for sediment delivery to continental margins, and channel deposits can be sandy components of the fill in tectonically active salt basins. Examples of salt-withdrawal basin fill commonly show successions of sandy channelized or sheet-like systems alternating with more mud-rich mass-transport complexes and hemipelagit...

Landslides are among the largest mass movements on Earth. As such, the deposits of landslides, also known as mass‐transport deposits, are significant architectural elements of continental margins, especially those receiving sediment from large deltas. Landslide dams have been shown to alter the courses of rivers and submarine channels. However, the...

There has been debate over the processes acting on deep-water channels with comparisons made to the evolution of meandering fluvial systems. We characterized a three-dimensional seismic-reflection dataset of the Joshua deep-water channel-levee system located in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and interpreted 13 horizons showing its kinematic evolution o...

Time-elevation plots and chronostratigraphic diagrams are valuable for understanding and analyzing stratigraphy when time-elevation data, or some approximation of them, are available, for example in flume experiments, numerical models, and three-dimensional seismic reflection surveys. We developed a Python module called 'stratigraph', aimed at the...

Late Cretaceous to Eocene Laramide basement–involved shortening fragmented the Sevier and Mexican foreland basins. This resulted in a major drainage reorganization in response to the emerging topography of Laramide basement–cored uplifts and Mexican inverted Border rift basins. This study presents new depth-profile detrital zircon U-Pb data (3679 a...

Interpretation of deep‐water channel deposits is challenging because the spatial arrangement of their constituent lithologies is highly variable. This variability is often thought to be a signature of complex interactions between controlling boundary conditions and processes. A three‐dimensional forward stratigraphic model of a sinuous meandering c...

This Special Paper focuses on the evolution of the crust of the hinterland of the orogen during the orogenic cycle, and describes the evolution of the crust and basins at metamorphic core complexes. The volume includes a regional study of the Sevier-Laramide orogens in the Wyoming province, a regional seismic study, strain analysis of Sevier and La...

Coastal erosion, including sea-cliff retreat, represents both an important component of some sediment budgets and a significant threat to coastal communities in the face of rising sea level. Despite the importance of predicting future rates of coastal erosion, few prehistoric constraints exist on the relative importance of sediment supplied by coas...

Deep-water channel systems represent the primary conduits of terrestrial sediment to the continental margins and ocean basins. They play an important role in the construction of continental margins, can host valuable resources, and act as repositories of organic carbon. Initial work has suggested that deep-water channels develop their sinuosity ear...

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Deep-water channel systems represent the primary conduits of terrestrial sediment to the continental margins and ocean basins. They are of crucial influence in the construction of continental margins and can host valuable resources as well as act as repositories of organic carbon.Initial work has suggested that deep-water channels develop their...

Research on the depositional record of submarine fans and related turbidite systems has highlighted the importance of channel, lobe, and levee-overbank architectural elements as fundamental building blocks. However, many of the characteristics and processes of deposits left by flows traversing those fans remain elusive, as flows seem to be able to...

We investigate the relationship between the cross-sectional geomorphic expression of a submarine channel as observed on the seafloor and the stratigraphic product of long-lived erosion, bypass, and sediment deposition. Specifically, by reconstructing the time–space evolution of an individual channel fill (i.e., channel element) exposed in outcrop,...

A shelf-margin depositional system is the stratigraphic product of terrigenous sediment delivery to the ocean, comprising a flat to low-gradient shelf, or topset, which transitions to a steeper deep-water slope, and, ultimately, a relatively flat basin floor, or bottomset. Erosional and depositional processes across these physiographic domains appr...

The sedimentary fill of peripheral foreland basins has the potential to preserve a record of the processes of ocean closure and continental collision, as well as the long-term (i.e., 107–108 yr) sediment-routing evolution associated with these processes; however, the detrital record of these deep-time tectonic processes and the sedimentary response...

Research on the depositional record of submarine fans and related turbidite systems has highlighted the importance of channel, lobe, and levee-overbank architectural elements as fundamental building blocks. However, many of the characteristics and processes of deposits left by flows traversing those fans remain elusive, as flows seem to be able to...

Research on the depositional record of submarine fans and related turbidite systems has highlighted the importance of channel, lobe and levee–overbank architectural elements as fundamental building blocks. However, many of the characteristics and processes of deposits left by flows traversing those fans remain elusive, because flows seem to be able...

Submarine channel systems convey terrestrially derived detritus from shallow-marine environments to some of the largest sediment accumulations on Earth, submarine fans. The stratigraphic record of submarine slope channels includes heterogeneous, composite deposits that provide evidence for erosion, sediment bypass, and deposition. However, the timi...

Submarine fans are important components of continental margins; they contain a stratigraphic record of environmental changes and host large accumulations of oil and gas. The grain size and volume of sediment supply to fans is thought to control the heterogeneity of deep-water deposits; predicting spatial variability of sandy and muddy deposits is a...

Sequence stratigraphic models emphasize changes in accommodation driven by relative sea level as a principal control on continental-margin development. Therefore, it has been hypothesized that there are differences in the volume and distribution of sand delivered to deep-water during the high-amplitude sea-level changes of icehouse settings versus...

Submarine fans are important components of continental margins; they contain a stratigraphic record of environmental changes and host large accumulations of oil and gas. The grain size and volume of sediment supply to fans is thought to control the heterogeneity of deep-water deposits; predicting spatial variability of sandy and muddy deposits is a...

Large meandering submarine-channel systems are important conduits for mass transfer to continental margins; wider and deeper channels, with larger meanders, reflect larger sediment discharge. Some large meandering channel systems are known to receive voluminous sediment from the largest rivers in the world, such as the Ganges-Brahmaputra, Amazon, I...

Here we present the results of an integrated seismic stratigraphic, detrital zircon U-Pb, and petrographic provenance study in the Gulf of Mexico that delineates a series of large-scale Oligocene to Miocene fan systems. We show extensive submarine fans, sourced from southern Mexican terranes, extended across a large area of the deep-water Gulf of M...

Deep-water channels can form highly aggradational channel belts relative to their fluvial counterparts. Initial work has suggested that deep-water channels develop their sinuosity early on, reach a planform equilibrium, and then undergo near vertical aggradation during which channel migration is limited and cutoffs are rare. However, observations f...

Understanding how environmental forcings (e.g., tectonics, climate) are transformed by erosional landscapes into sedimentary signals is a critical component of inverting the stratigraphic record. Previous research has largely focused on sediment supply (Qs) and grain size as the de facto sedimentary signals of changing forcing mechanisms. We use a...

Full results and details on how the data analysis was done

One of the long- and widely held ideas about the dynamics of meandering rivers is that migration slows down in bends with higher curvatures. High-resolution measurements of migration rates of more than 1600 bends in time-lapse Landsat satellite images, covering more than 4000 km of seven rapidly migrating meandering rivers in the Amazon Basin, sugg...

**See EarthArXiv preprint here: https://eartharxiv.org/e4at7/** Channel-bend expansion and downstream translation, as well as vertical movements by aggradation and incision, set the stratigraphic architecture of channelized depositional systems. Early work on submarine-channel evolution has suggested that downstream translation is rare. We propose...

Terrigenous marine sediment records the landscape response to climate and tectonic perturbations. Here, we determined the source of Miocene-Pleistocene debris in the western Gulf of Mexico (WGOM) to understand changes in sediment supply during a greenhouse-glacial transition. Sediment composition at Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) Sites 3, 87, and...

Spatiotemporal variations in tectonic style, as expressed by evolving topography, exert a primary control on how sediment is generated and transported from source to sink in terrestrial systems and can influence basin-fill architecture, reservoir presence, and quality. During Late Cretaceous-Paleogene time, Texas was situated in a transitional tect...

Integration of detrital zircon geochronology and three-dimensional (3D) seismic-reflection data from the Molasse basin of Austria yields new insight into Oligocene-early Miocene paleogeography and patterns of sediment routing within the Alpine foreland of central Europe. Three-dimensional seismic-reflection data show a network of deep-water tributa...

Deepwater channel systems can host significant petroleum and hydrological resources and be used as repositories for carbon capture and sequestration applications. They can form unique stratigraphic stacking patterns by undergoing differing degrees of the following morphodynamic processes: incision, lateral migration and aggradation. This 3D movemen...

Submarine fans are archives of Earth‐surface processes and change, recording information about the turbidity currents that construct and sculpt them. The volume and recurrence of turbidity currents are of great interest for geohazard assessment, source‐to‐sink modeling, and hydrocarbon reservoir characterization. Yet, such dynamics are poorly const...

EarthArXiv preprint available: https://eartharxiv.org/f9dkp/ 50 days' free access Marine and Petroleum Geology: https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1WWceyDcGAlex Submarine fans in tectonically active continental-slope basins are targets of petroleum exploration and production. These slope fans commonly comprise compensationally stacked sandy and muddy...

We used laser particle size analysis (LPSA) to quantitatively analyze grain-size characteristics from distal Mississippi submarine fan deposits (Gulf of Mexico) and relate them to established depositional models along the spectrum of sediment gravity flows. One hundred and seventy-nine (179) sediment samples from 22 beds were obtained from cores of...

Sediment supply to the ocean influences basin-margin growth and reflects upstream landscape evolution, including patterns of sediment routing, denudation, and tectono-climatic perturbations in source areas. Constraining sediment supply is useful for inputs to stratigraphic forward models and for predictions of reservoir presence and quality. Becaus...

(in review at "Depositional Record")Submarine fans are archives of Earth-surface processes and change, recording information about the turbidity currents that construct and sculpt them. The volume and recurrence of turbidity currents are of great interest for geohazard assessment, source-to-sink modeling, and hydrocarbon reservoir characterization....

Submarine fans in tectonically active continental-slope basins are targets of petroleum exploration and production. These slope fans commonly comprise compensationally stacked sandy and muddy architectural elements, including mass-transport deposits, weakly confined to distributary channel-and-lobe deposits, and leveed-channel deposits. The lateral...

Recent advances in detrital zircon (DZ) U-Pb geochronology have allowed for new insights into source-to-sink systems that drain complex, highly variable source terranes. Numerous studies have employed DZ U-Pb geochronology to reconstruct how Paleogene fluvial sediments were routed through the W U.S. and Mexico Cordillera to fluvial-deltaic strata a...

Allogenic and autogenic processes interact to regulate sediment distribution in sedimentary basins. Depositional systems can respond in a complex manner to these processes, complicating interpretation of the controls on the stratigraphic record. Here we used published and constant eustatic curves in a stratigraphic forward model to examine the effe...

One of the long- and widely held ideas about the dynamics of meanderingrivers is that migration slows down in bends with higher curvatures.Identifying the radius of curvature at which migration is fastest isstandard practice in field studies of meandering rivers. High-resolutionmeasurements of local migration rates in time-lapse Landsat images from...

Review of concepts of environmental signal (climate, tectonics, anthropogenic, etc.) propagation in sedimentary systems from source to sink.

Submarine channels are often thought of as having relatively simple geometries, with significant along-channel morphologic and stratigraphic continuity. Using high-resolution seismic reflection data from offshore Angola and a kinematic model of channel evolution, we present evidence that channels on the seafloor can develop slope variability as a r...

With the huge amount of multi-disciplinary and multi-scale datasets gathered along the past years by the Oil and Gas community, geoscientists face many challenges while trying to solve complex problems related to the E&P chain. Three of the main ones are (1) the integration of such important amounts of data, (2) difficulties in managing scaling whi...

Continental weathering is an important feedback on climate change. However, uncertainty remains regarding the sedimentary response and scale of this feedback, due to the sporadic preservation of in situ geologic evidence for weathering. We examined the United States Gulf of Mexico coast continental margin for a downstream sedimentary response to Pa...

Eustasy constitutes a key control on continental shelf accommodation along with tectonism. The combined effect of these processes influences relative sea level, which is thought to regulate the location of facies, stratigraphic architecture, and distribution of sediment to basin margins. Here, we used a nonlinear, diffusion-based numerical stratigr...

Deep-water channel fill comprises thick-bedded sandstone in the thalweg that transitions laterally to thin-bedded deposits toward the margins. Channel fills stack to form composite channel systems, which commonly exhibit an evolution of early channel incision and lateral migration to late-stage aggradation. This stratigraphic evolution ultimatel...

Cyclic steps are long-wave (the ratio of wavelength to height is >>1), upstream-migrating, upper-flow-regime bedforms bounded by internal hydraulic jumps (i.e., transition from densimetric Froude supercritical to subcritical flow) in turbidity currents. They commonly occur in regions with high gradients and slope breaks. Here we review the morphody...

Continental-scale drainages host the world's largest rivers and offshore sediment accumulations, many of which contain significant petroleum reserves. Rate of sediment supply in these settings may be a signal of external controls (e.g., tectonics) on landscape evolution, yet deciphering these controls remains a major challenge in interpreting the a...

Eustasy constitutes a key control on continental-shelf accommodation along with tectonism. The combined effect of these processes influences relative sea level, which is thought to regulate the location of facies, stratigraphic architecture, and distribution of sediment to basin margins. Here, we used a nonlinear, diffusion-based, numerical stratig...

Submarine fans are the largest sediment accumulations on Earth and represent the ultimate sink for clastic detritus. The sediment budget and frequency of turbidity currents that construct submarine fans are poorly understood due to lack of modern flow measurements. Only in the past few years have reliable flow measurements been made in submarine ca...

Submarine-channel systems record basin-margin sediment dispersal and can host significant natural resources. We review the facies architecture (i.e., facies heterogeneity and stacking patterns) of outcropping submarine-channel systems, focusing on the Cretaceous Tres Pasos Formation, Magallanes basin, southern Chile. The fundamental building block...

Submarine channels are often thought of as having relatively simple geometries, with significant along-channel morphologic and stratigraphic continuity. Using high-resolution seismic reflection data from offshore Angola and a kinematic model of channel evolution, we present evidence that channels on the seafloor can develop slope variability as a r...

Eustasy is thought to be a critical control on the distribution of sediment in basin margins and is used in conceptual stratigraphic models to predict the location of sand-rich deposits and explain basin development. We used a nonlinear, diffusion-based numerical forward stratigraphic model in a synthetic basin to test the impact of the widely cite...

Sediment production and transport within a drainage basin influence the rate and total volume of sediment delivered to the coast. The rate of sediment delivery has implications for local ecology, land use, and natural resources. Sediment supply is controlled by multiple factors (e.g., drainage basin size, geology, relief and climate) that are nonli...

Submarine channels are conduits through which turbidity currents and related mass movements transport sediment into the deep sea, thereby playing important roles in the development of continental margins and biogeochemical cycles. To gain a better understanding of submarine channel morphodynamic evolution we explore a variety of channel systems fro...

Stratigraphic rule-based modeling methods approximate sedimentary dynamics to generate numerical descriptions of reservoir architecture and the spatial distribution of petrophysical properties. A few intuitive rules included in a reservoir model construction workflow are shown to render realistic reservoir heterogeneity, continuity, and spatial org...