Tectonics and Sea-Level Cycles in Barbados

Coral reef terraces provide key archives to reconstruct Quaternary sea-level cycles, and Barbados contains one of the most important sequences of coral reef terraces worldwide. The terraces have been formed by a combination of (regional) tectonic uplift and (global) sea-level fluctuations, and to decipher the relative influence of both, the newest generation of high-resolution Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) may provide crucial new insights.

The main aims of the internship are to : 1) develop a DEM from 0.7m-resolution Pleiades satellite imagery, using AMS StereoPipeline software, 2) perform a detailed tectono-morphological analysis of the terrace sequence. This will include detailed mapping of the terraces using the DEM, characterising the 3D deformation pattern and integrating results with the regional tectonic framework, and 3) use numerical models on selected topographic profiles to test which combinations of tectonic uplift and sea-level variations provide the best match between models and observations.

The project is grounded within a long-standing collaboration of French and foreign scientists working on coral reef terraces. It provides an opportunity to gain valuable skills in tectonics, geomorphology and sea-level cycles while using several different softwares and numerical codes. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.