Global Scalable Paleo Landscape Evolution

History

2023: Product Announcement

In early March 2023, scientists from the University of Sydney in Australia presented what they said was the most detailed model of geological changes on Earth. Using a structure involving geodynamics, tectonic and climatic forces, the researchers built a dynamic model. This is the first computer simulation of the last 100 Ma with a high resolution of up to 10 km. The technology is called Global Scalable Paleo Landscape Evolution (goSPL).

In the video, scientists from the University of Sydney in Australia showed how the landscape changed over 100 million years: river movement, change in the level of the World Ocean, mineral deposits, movement of tectonic plates. Climate and various natural phenomena, such as volcanic eruptions or earthquakes, were also taken into account.

University of Sydney Development Earth Model

The Global Scalable Paleo Landscape Evolution model includes the dynamics of the planet's atmosphere, hydrosphere, tectonic plates and mantle, and how this affected the movement and subsidence of sedimentary rocks. The model, broken down into personnel of a million years, is based on a system that combines plate tectonic and climatic forces with surface processes such as earthquakes, weathering, river change and more. For the study, goSPL is combined with models of the past global climate and reconstructions of historical plate tectonics. Several hundred computer processors have calculated the change in the Earth over the past 100 million years.

The project began in 2020, when scientists began developing a new global model of landscape evolution capable of mimicking millions of years of change. Researchers also found ways to automatically add other information to the model, such as paleogeography - the history of Earth's landscapes. For the goSPL project, the researchers used state-of-the-art plate tectonic reconstructions and modeling past climate on a global scale.

According to scientists, computer simulations used Australia's National Computing Infrastructure, which runs on hundreds of computer processors. Each simulation took several days, creating a complete picture for the reconstruction of the last 100 million years of Earth's surface evolution. All this computational power made it possible to create high-resolution global maps that show the high and low points of the earth's landscape, as well as the flows of water and sedimentary rocks. All this is well consistent with existing geological observations for 2023.

The goSPL model reveals more details about the role that Earth's ever-evolving surface played in moving sediments from mountaintops to oceanic basins, eventually regulating Earth's carbon cycle and climate fluctuations over deep time.^[1]

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