Michael Kinsela

PhD Candidate

Madsen Building (F09), Room 434
Phone: +61 2 9351 4939
Fax: +61 2 9351 3644
Email:

Supervisor
Assoc. Prof. Peter Cowell

Associate Supervisor
Dr. Ana Vila-Concejo

Research

PhD: Morphokinematic response of the shoreface profile to changing sea level and implications for the deposition and preservation of systems tracts.

Subsurface sedimentary records evident in seismic reflection and ground-penetrating radar surveys, and sampled in coring expeditions, indicate great variability in the Quaternary coastal depositional record along the southeast Australian margin. Despite the exposure of this margin to relatively spatially uniform glacio-eustatic sea level fluctuations during this period, variation in margin geomorphology has given rise a diverse range of preserved sequences in both thickness and structure. This is most readily observed today in the variable occurrence and arrangement of current and last interglacial coastal barriers along the present southeast Australian coastline.

The focus of Michael’s thesis research is an investigation of the potential for variation in shoreface profile geometry under changing sea level conditions in different environmental settings, and the implications for both the deposition and preservation of systems tracts. The research exploits existing seismic and dated core data in an innovative numerical modelling approach that combines two fundamentally different cross-shore profile models. More specifically, experimental findings on shoreface response to changing sea level gained from BarSim (developed at Delft University of Technology) are applied within the Shoreface Translation Model (STM) to simulate the deposition and subsequent evolution of a complete sequence. The model is then validated against the evolution of a well-documented sequence (Forster-Tuncurry shelf) and may then be applied at other locations with limited subsurface data. Unlike many other continental margins of the world on which Quaternary sequences are thought to be completely reworked by wave action during each sea level cycle (e.g. Dutch North Sea and US Atlantic), relatively intact systems tracts from all sea level stages have been preserved on parts of the southeast Australian margin making it an ideal field laboratory for the project.

Michael’s research has further applications in modelling the coastal impacts of climate-change, and he maintains an active research interest in the advancement of probabilistic forecasts of shoreline response to predicted climate change through the combined use of high-resolution terrain datasets and stochastic simulation techniques.

Publications

• Kinsela, M.A. Topographic control of dune response to climate-change impacts. BSc. (Marine Science) Hons. Thesis, University of Sydney, 2007.

Conference Procedings

• Kinsela, M. A. and Cowell, P. J. Local geomorphology as a driver of spatial variability in coastal climate-change impacts. AMSA 2010 - New Waves in Marine Science, University of Wollongong, 4-8 July 2010.
• Kinsela, M. A. Shoreface profile evolution and the preservation of Quaternary coastal successions. AMSA 2010 - New Waves in Marine Science, University of Wollongong, 4-8 July 2010.