About

CarboCAT is primarily based on a very simple cellular automaton (CA). We may explore this CA as a first step in implementing the model in Julia.

Overview

The CarboCAT model [5] consists of several components, many of which are optional or contain optional levels of complexity.

Species habitation: an algorithm is in place to evolve the locality of a number of factory species.
Sediment production: each species will produce sediment according to some model.
Transport: sediment may be transported from a production site to elsewhere due to gravity, waves or other types of mixing.
Erosion: sediment may erode depending on local circumstances or sediment type.
Compactification: different types of sediment may respond to compression forces differently.

These processes describe the intrinsic properties of the model. Any parameters that change these processes will be referred to as model parameters. Next to that, there are some extrinsic parameters that change the specific output of a model: the initial depth of the sea bed (also known as bathymetry) and variation in sea level (including subsidence). These we call input parameters.

Carbonate production

By itself, a sediment production model is enough to model a cross-section of a carbonate platform [BS92: @Bosscher1992]. As a first step, we have reproduced some results of BS92. Using a reasonably simple approximation of a growth rate as

[$\partial_t h = - g_m \tanh \left[\frac{I_0}{I_k} \exp(-k * (h - s(t))\right],$]{#eq:growth-rate-eqn}

where $h$ is the depth of the sea floor, $g_m$ is the maximum growth rate, $I_0$ the surface light intensity, $I_k$ the saturating light intensity, $k$ the extinction coefficient, and $s$ the (extrinsic) sea-level. In one example given by BS92, we arrived at the following profile.

Species habitation

These species can be anything, just remember that they are the progenitor of some (limestone) facies type. In the original 2013 model, this stage is implemented by a celullar automaton (or CA). The CA has the nice property of giving pseudo-random output with at least some degree of coherence. There is no physical basis to the CA model, but neither is there very much data to test a physical model against.

We have implemented the CA used in Burgess 2013. Using three species with identical 4-6-10-10 rules (survival between 4 to 10 neighbours, birth between 6-10 live neighbours).

An interesting question is under what rules is this CA stable (i.e. keeps evolving)?

Combination

The minimal Carbocat model would consist of only species habitation and production.

:::details

Some submodules

file:src/Burgess2013.jl

module Burgess2013

include("Burgess2013/CA.jl")

end

Crowding

In crowded areas carbonate production rates are reduced. For cells where

\[n_{min} \le n \le n_{opt}\]

and

\[n_{opt} \le n \le n_{max}\]

($n_{min}$ and $n_{max}$ for living cells are 4 and 10)

we have a linear increase and linear decrease of production rate (i.e. a triangle function).

Subsidence

Subsidence refers to gradual lowering or lifting of the underlying floor bed. This could be either sea level rise due to climate change, but also tectonic activity. Sea level also changes according to a given recipe with say three sinusoidals (e.g. Milankovich cycles). When a cell gets "subaerial exposure", i.e. the water level drops below the cell elevation (stupid jargon), accumulation stops and the cell becomes dormant. On reflooding, the cell resumes activity. From the text it is not entirely clear, but I think deactivated cells don't take part in the CA, so they count as dead neighbours.

reference on accommodation, also links to a model called SedFlux.

\[T + E = S + W\]

Saying Tectonic subsidence plus Eustatic sea-level change equals Sedimentation plus change in Water depth.

Steps

Update waterdepth, given subsidence
Update sea level elevation, given eustatics
Run CA
Compute thickness of carbonate production
Compute sediment transport

We need to keep a state with the following components:

height map
species
global time, implying:
- sea level and subsidence

Every cycle we may export a layer of sediment to archive.