Sediment budget - Upper Rhine Graben

Applicants: Prof. Dr. Matthias Hinderer, Dr. Dietrich Ellwanger, Prof. Dr. Manfred Frechen

Funding: SPP International Continental Drilling Project; DFG HI 643/2-3

Persons in charge: Jörg Lämmermann-Barthel, Inge Neeb

Duration: 2002 – 2006

Summary

The Pliocene and Quaternary unconsolidated rocks of the Alpenrhein valley/Bodensee amphitheatre, Hochrhein, Swabian terrace landscape, Swiss Midlands, and the Upper Rhine Graben together with its Alpine drainage areas represent an almost closed denudation-accumulation system. Based on a newly developed combined stratigraphy valid in all five landsystems and a voluminous data base (e.g. drillings, outcrop studies, mapping, seismics, pollen analysis) the sediment volumes of a minimum of four megacycles will be quantified during the total runtime of the project by using an electronical data base and GIS techniques. New insights are expected into (i) the morphodynamic response of the Alps to climate change and the interplay with their uplift, (ii) the mechanisms of the growth and decay of Alpine foreland glaciers, (iii) the morphogenesis of the Alpine foreland inclusive changes in the drainage pattern, (iv) the correlation of the Alpine sedimentary record with extra-Alpine continental regions and the marine record, (v) new concepts of sequence stratigraphy in discontinuous continental deposits, (vi) the reasons and the magnitude of the global increase of terrigenous sediment fluxes in the Quaternary. In the second period of the project most effort is put on the control of the stratigraphic framework by OSL and TIMS U/Th dating and the set-up of a GIS for the key regions Alpenrhein/Bodensee amphitheatre and the southern Upper Rhine Graben.