Poverty Shelf, New Zealand from the Holocene to Present: Stratigraphic Development and Event Layer Preservation in Response to Sediment Supply, Tectonics and Climate.

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the stratigraphic development of Poverty Shelf, including event layer preservation, over the last ∼14ka using geochemical proxies and physical properties analyses of the sedimentary record. The work herein was conducted under the auspices of the MARGINS Source-to-Sink program, a multi-national, interdisciplinary study focused on understanding sediment routing, transformation and fate through the Waipaoa Sedimentary System (WSS) from catchment sources to final sinks on the adjacent Poverty Shelf and Slope. A suit of five giant piston cores and eight box cores were retrieved from Poverty Shelf during two cruises to address long (Holocene) and short (modern) timescales, respectively, of deposition.