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Impact of small-scale vegetation structure on tephra layer preservation

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Streeter_SR_Small_scaleVegetation_CC.pdf (1.666Mb)
Date
15/11/2016
Author
Cutler, Nick A.
Sheers, Olivia M.
Streeter, Richard T.
Dugmore, Andrew J.
Keywords
GE Environmental Sciences
NDAS
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Abstract
The factors that influence tephra layer taphonomy are poorly understood, but vegetation cover is likely to play a role in the preservation of terrestrial tephra deposits. The impact of vegetation on tephra layer preservation is important because: 1) the morphology of tephra layers could record key characteristics of past land surfaces and 2) vegetation-driven variability in tephra thickness could affect attempts to infer eruption and dispersion parameters. We investigated small- (metre-) scale interactions between vegetation and a thin (<10 cm), recent tephra layer. We conducted surveys of vegetation structure and tephra thickness at two locations which received a similar tephra deposit, but had contrasting vegetation cover (moss vs shrub). The tephra layer was thicker and less variable under shrub cover. Vegetation structure and layer thickness were correlated on the moss site but not under shrub cover, where the canopy reduced the influence of understory vegetation on layer morphology. Our results show that vegetation structure can influence tephra layer thickness on both small and medium (site) scales. These findings suggest that some tephra layers may carry a signal of past vegetation cover. They also have implications for the sampling effort required to reliably estimate the parameters of initial deposits.
Citation
Cutler , N A , Sheers , O M , Streeter , R T & Dugmore , A J 2016 , ' Impact of small-scale vegetation structure on tephra layer preservation ' , Scientific Reports , vol. 6 , 37260 . https://doi.org/10.1038/srep37260
Publication
Scientific Reports
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/srep37260
ISSN
2045-2322
Type
Journal article
Rights
© The Author(s) 2016. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Description
The research was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation to AJD (award number 1249313).
Collections
  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/9822

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