INSTAAR: James P.M. Syvitski

Fellow and Former Director of INSTAAR; Executive Director of CSDMS; Professor of Geological Sciences, Univ. of Colorado at Boulder.

PhD, University of British Columbia, 1978.

james.syvitski@colorado.edu
(303) 735-5482

INSTAAR Directorate Members

Specialty: Sedimentology, oceanography, hydrology, numerical modeling of Earth surface dynamics, marine geophysics, slope instabilities, and land-ocean interactions.

Research Interests: Presently investigating: (1) the discharge dynamics of global rivers and the sediment load they carry, (2) the morphology and deposits of continental margins, (3) the impact of high-energy weather events on our coastline; and (4) the impact of ice sheets on high-latitude shelves and slopes.

Outstanding Award: 1998 Best Paper Award from the International Association for Mathematical Geology.

Selected Publications:

Hutton, E.W.H. and Syvitski, J.P.M. 2004, Advances in the Numerical Modeling of Sediment Failure During the Development of a Continental Margin. Marine Geology, 203: 367-380.
Kubo, Y., Syvitski, J.P.M., Hutton, E.W.H., Paola, C. 2005, Advance and application of the stratigraphic simulation model 2D-SedFlux: From tank experiment to geological scale simulation. Sedimentary Geology 178: 187-195.
Mulder, Th. Syvitski, J.P.M., Migeon, S., Faugères, J.-C., and Savoye, B., 2003, Marine hyperpycnal flows: initiation, behavior and related deposits: A review. Marine and Petroleum Geology, 20 861–882.
Overeem, I., Syvitski, J.P.M., Hutton, E.W.H., and Kettner, A.J. 2005, Stratigraphic variability due to uncertainty in model boundary conditions: a case-study of the New Jersey Shelf over the last 21,000 years. Marine Geology 224: 23-41.
Restrepo, J. D., Syvitski, J.P.M., 2006, Assessing the effect of natural controls and land use change on sediment yield in a major Andean river: The Magdalena drainage basin, Colombia. Ambio, 35, 65-74.
Syvitski, J.P.M., 2005, The morphodynamics of deltas and their distributary channels. In: G. Parker and M. Garcia (Eds.) River, Coastal and Estuarine Morphodynamics, Taylor and Francis Group, London, pp. 143-160.
Syvitski, J.P.M., Harvey, N., Wollanski, E., Burnett, W.C., Perillo, G.M.E., and Gornitz, V. 2005, Dynamics of the Coastal Zone. In: C. J. Crossland, H.H. Kremer, H.J. Lindeboom, J.I. Marshall Crossland, M.D.A. Le Tissier (Eds.) Global Fluxes in the Anthropocene. Springer, Berlin, pp. 39-94.
Syvitski, J.P.M., Kettner, A., Peckham, S.D. and Kao, S.-J. 2005, Predicting the Flux of Sediment to the Coastal Zone: application to the Lanyang watershed, northern Taiwan. J. Coastal Res., 21, 580-587.
Syvitski, J.P.M., Pratson, L.F., Wiberg, P.L., Steckler, M.S., Garcia, M.H., Geyer, W.R., Harris, C.K., Hutton, E.W.H., Imran, J., Lee, H.J., Morehead, M.D., and Parker, G., 2007. Prediction of margin stratigraphy. In: C.A. Nittrouer, J.A. Austin, M.E. Field, J.H. Kravitz, J.P.M. Syvitski, and P.L. Wiberg (Eds.) Continental-Margin Sedimentation: From Sediment Transport to Sequence Stratigraphy. IAS Spec. Publ. No. 37: 459-530.
Syvitski, J.P.M., Vörösmarty C, Kettner, A.J., Green, P. 2005, Impact of humans on the flux of terrestrial sediment to the global coastal ocean. Science, 308: 376-380.
Syvitski, J.P.M. and Milliman, J.D., 2007, Geology, geography and humans battle for dominance over the delivery of sediment to the coastal ocean. J. Geology 115: 1–19.
Syvitski, J.P.M., Kettner, A.J., Correggiari, A., Nelson, B.W. 2005, Distributary channels and their impact on sediment dispersal. Marine Geology 222-223: 75-94.

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