09 - Investigating the relationship between grain size and storm intensity in Middle Caicos Island
Description/Abstract/Artist Statement
Hurricanes are highly destructive and play a significant role in shaping coastlines around the globe. Unfortunately, many properties of these storm systems are poorly understood due to the short and biased observational record of hurricanes. To gain information on past hurricane properties, we use a transect of three sediment cores collected from a blue hole on the southwest shore of Middle Caicos Island. These sediment cores contain coarse grains suspended and transported by storm events into the blue hole. Tracking the coarse-grained layers in each core provides information on storm frequency over the past millennium, but doesn’t provide insight into past storm intensity. Analyzing trends in grain sizes across each core in our transect might provide a way to reconstruct storm intensity. We used a Camsizer X2 to measure the grain size distribution for 64 events across our three sediment cores. If we find bigger grains in a storm event layer further along our transect of blue hole cores, we argue that this storm event is more intense. Less intense storms leave larger grains closer to the ocean side edge of the blue hole. The majority of event layers we analyzed exhibited an ocean to island side fining trend suggesting there is promise in using cores from the Middle Caicos blue hole to reconstruct storm intensity. Our results will help improve understanding of storm intensity over the past millennium which in tandem with data on storm frequency will researchers’ understand how these storms influence the geology of the Bahamian Archipelago.
Faculty Advisor/Mentor
Elizabeth Wallace
Faculty Advisor/Mentor Department
Oceanography
College Affiliation
College of Sciences
Presentation Type
Poster
Disciplines
Oceanography
09 - Investigating the relationship between grain size and storm intensity in Middle Caicos Island
Hurricanes are highly destructive and play a significant role in shaping coastlines around the globe. Unfortunately, many properties of these storm systems are poorly understood due to the short and biased observational record of hurricanes. To gain information on past hurricane properties, we use a transect of three sediment cores collected from a blue hole on the southwest shore of Middle Caicos Island. These sediment cores contain coarse grains suspended and transported by storm events into the blue hole. Tracking the coarse-grained layers in each core provides information on storm frequency over the past millennium, but doesn’t provide insight into past storm intensity. Analyzing trends in grain sizes across each core in our transect might provide a way to reconstruct storm intensity. We used a Camsizer X2 to measure the grain size distribution for 64 events across our three sediment cores. If we find bigger grains in a storm event layer further along our transect of blue hole cores, we argue that this storm event is more intense. Less intense storms leave larger grains closer to the ocean side edge of the blue hole. The majority of event layers we analyzed exhibited an ocean to island side fining trend suggesting there is promise in using cores from the Middle Caicos blue hole to reconstruct storm intensity. Our results will help improve understanding of storm intensity over the past millennium which in tandem with data on storm frequency will researchers’ understand how these storms influence the geology of the Bahamian Archipelago.