Impact of Hurricane Katrina (2005) on deltaic evolution and shelf organic carbon cycling

Abstract

Sediment cores from the continental shelf adjacent to the Mississippi River delta immediately after the passage of Hurricane Katrina were used to examine the magnitude, and implications for the carbon budget, of sediment and particulate organic carbon (POC) remobilized by the storm on the river-dominated continental shelf. POC was sourced from incision of the innermost continental shelf (<25 m water depth) and from surge ebb advection from adjacent wetlands and shallow estuaries, and was re-deposited in deeper water on the shelf. This pulse of young (<1,600 yBP) labile POC, mixed with relict (>5000 yBP) POC eroded from the seafloor, has major implications for the remineralization versus burial of POC in deltas. The scale of erosional deflation of the shelf in water depths beyond seasonal wave-current conditions suggests that, over millennia, tropical cyclones may be responsible for partly removing prodeltaic strata from the geologic record in low-to-mid latitude deltas.