Hot off the press! Dismantling of an isolated tropical carbonate platform in the Coral Sea, Northeast Australia.

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3D sea floor image showing outcrops exposed in the submarine canyons off Tregrosse Bank, Coral Sea (Betzler et al., 2024)

Please join me in congratulating of GRG collaborator Professor Christian Betzler on the publication of another great paper in the journal Marine Geology.

Betzler, C., Lindhorst, S., Hincke, C., Eisermann, J. O., Bialik, O. M., Petrovic, A., Reolid, J., Beaman, R. J., Webster, J. M., Lüdmann, T., and Hübscher, C., 2024, Dismantling of an isolated tropical carbonate platform through flank collapse and canyon erosion, Coral Sea, Northeast Australia, Marine Geology 475. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.margeo.2024.107361

This paper is Open Access so feel free to download it directly here.

The paper presents a comprehensive analysis of newly collected high-resolution marine geophysical data (multbeam bathymetry, sub-bottom profiles), sea floor imagery and sediment cores (box and gravity cores) collected during the RV Sonne Cruise (SO292) to investigate the evolution and partial drowning of the Queensland Plateau, off the Northeastern Australian margin. This particular paper is focused on understanding the processes involved in the carbonate platform margin collapse and mass transport complexes (MTCs) associated with the huge, isolated tropical carbonate platforms in the Coral Sea.

Paper highlights include:

  • Three processes control the dismantling of a carbonate platform in the Coral Sea; (1) erosion, (2) platform rim and upper slope destabilization as well as (3) lower slope dismantling.
  • The processes largely act independently of each other.
  • Gravity core data indicate that most sediment export from the platform occurs during sea-level fall.
  • The complexity of platform dismantling processes should be considered when interpreting seismic morphological data.

The study is part of a wonderful, ongoing collaboration between the GRG, JCU and Professor Christian Betzler’s marine geology & geophysics group at the University of Hamburg, Germany focused on carbonate platform evolution in Coral Sea.

This study also represents another step in an exciting program of collaboration between the University of Sydney and numerous national and international partners working together on a wealth of new data collected on recent research cruises on the RV Sonne (German DFG) and RV Falkor (Schmidt Ocean Institute) to investigate long term carbonate platform evolution, submarine landslides, and modern mesophotic reefs and the deeper water, unexplored seascapes of the Coral Sea. 

Bravo Christian and the team!

Cheers

Jody

#MarineScienceSydneyUni

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