An Assessment Of Ground Penetrating Radar As A Technique In Quantifying Sediment Accumulation On The Trinity River Delta Tx PDF Download

This thesis uses Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and traditional coring methods to quantify Holocene sedimentation rates in the Trinity River Delta, Texas. Results showed that, while GPR is useful in determining subsurface stratigraphy in coarse-grained environments such as sand bars, it is not useful for subsurface investigations in marshes, where high clay and water content of the sediments attenuate the GPR signal. Radiocarbon dating of shell fragments recovered from sediment cores (292-536cm) ranged from 2.8 to 3.2 Ka. Mean sediment accumulation rates varied between 1.2 and 1.8 mm yr-1 for two areas of the delta, consistent with previous research. At these rates, modern sediment input from the Trinity River is inadequate to account for sediment accretion in the delta. Therefore, other non-fluvial sediment sources must be contributing to the accretion of sediment within the delta.