Geocolloquium lecture: Disentangling Climatic and Tectonic Controls in a Plio-Pleistocene Fluvial Archive
On Thursday, 10 July 2025, Dr. Laura Stutenbecker (Universität Münster) will give a lecture in the Geocolloquium series.
13:15, Lecture hall C.011
Dr. Laura Stutenbecker (U Münster)
Disentangling Climatic and Tectonic Controls in a Plio-Pleistocene Fluvial Archive
Abstract: Rivers play a central role in transporting water and sediment across the Earth's surface. Tectonic and climatic drivers, as well as autogenic processes, shape river systems and the distribution of sediment through time and space. Reading fluvial deposits in the geological record provides important information about past Earth surface processes and dynamics. Extracting and disentangling environmental signals from the geological record, however, is challenging and requires an interdisciplinary approach. This presentation showcases the Pliocene and Pleistocene sediment dynamics of the Rhine River in western Germany. The combination of heavy mineral analysis, bulk geochemistry and cyclostratigraphy allows identifying both tectonic and climatic signals in the Rhine graben sedimentary record and connecting them to regional and global events.
Vita: Laura is a professor of sedimentology and Earth surface processes at the University of Münster. She studied Geological Sciences at the Freie Universität Berlin (2008-2014) and holds a PhD in Earth Sciences from the University of Bern, Switzerland (2017). She spent 5 years as a postdoc and lecturer at the Technical University of Darmstadt (2017-2022). Her research focuses on the quantification of earth surface processes through sediment fingerprinting/provenance analysis, mixing modeling, and sediment budgeting.