Research Interests (Global Research)

My overall research interests involve sediment dispersal, strata formation, and system development along continental margins … particularly within river, delta, and wetland environments. These subaerial portions of the margin serve as critical gateways between the land and oceans, serving to filter, mitigate, or otherwise alter the tremendous flux of material reaching the coast. As well, nearly 50% of the world’s population lives along a coastline and is thus may be threatened by sea-level rise, storm events, shoreline erosion, wetland loss, and climate change. Continuous losses of life, infrastructure, and habitat have exposed the need to better understand the causes and consequences of these processes. In terms of geological processes, the sediments that accumulate along continental margins preserve a detailed record of environmental conditions … this record is an important window through which we can study past responses to climate, land-use, and tectonics.

One area in which we have been studying these questions is along the margins of South and East Asia, where seven of the world’s largest rivers drain the Himalayas and form major deltas in China, Vietnam, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. These systems are particularly exciting to study because: (1) the Himalayan uplift drives a very strong monsoon weather machine; (2) active tectonics in the region provide an abundant and generally coarse sediment load; (3) the marginal seas of the Asian coast support high-energy, large tidal-range conditions; and (4) the low-lying deltas of the region support close to a billion(!) people. Our most active research program in past years has been on the Ganges-Brahmaputra River delta in Bangladesh. This system in particular is a gem for research … the two mighty rivers that feed the delta drain both the foreslope and backslope of the Himalayas, the area is very tectonically active, and the flood prone deltaplains are home to nearly 200 million people. Beyond the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta, we are now working in other Asian delta settings, including the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers of China.

Closer to New York’s coastal waters, we are also working on wetland and shoreline research near Stony Brook. The natural laboratories of Long Island Sound, Peconic Bay, and the South Shore estuaries each support numerous salt marsh and coastal wetland habitats, which are under threat from both natural and human-induced changes. Ongoing work funded by New York Sea Grant is looking at three different salt-marsh sites around Long Island. One major goal of this study is to reconstruct the marshes’s histories of response to environmental change, such as sea-level rise, shifting land use, and changing coastal morphology. The three wetland sites are also situated in distinct physical settings (ie., tide range, wave energy, sediment input), and we hope to discover varying sensitivities of these systems to the possible threats of future environmental change. In addition to wetland research, our lab is also working with Roger Flood, Robert Cerrato, and their labs on multidisciplinary investigations of the Peconic Bay system in eastern Long Island. This beautiful area was recently named part of EPA’s National Estuary Program. Supported with funds from the Nature Conservancy, our groups are mapping seafloor habitats to better understand the geological and biological dynamics of the system. The long-term goal of these projects is to establish a scientific foundation upon which future environmental and development strategies for the area can be based.

Selected Publications

Goodbred, S.L., Jr. Response of the Ganges dispersal system to climate change: a source-to-sink view since the last interstade. Sedimentary Geology, in press (2003).
(click here for PDF preprint, ~2MB)

Goodbred, S.L., Jr., Kuehl, S.A., Steckler, M., and Sarker, M.H. Controls on facies distribution and stratigraphic preservation in the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta sequence. Sedimentary Geology, v. 155, p. 301-316, 2003.

Goodbred, S.L., Jr. and Kuehl, S.A. Enormous Ganges-Brahmaputra sediment load during strengthened early Holocene monsoon. Geology, v. 28, p. 1083-1086, 2000.

Goodbred, S.L., Jr. and Kuehl, S.A. The significance of large sediment supply, active tectonism, and eustasy on margin sequence development: Late Quaternary stratigraphy and evolution of the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta. Sedimentary Geology, v. 133, p. 227-248, 2000.

Goodbred, S.L., Jr. and Kuehl, S.A. Holocene and modern sediment budgets for the Ganges-Brahmaputra river: Evidence for highstand dispersal to floodplain, shelf, and deep-sea depocenters. Geology, v. 27(6), p. 559-562, 1999.

Goodbred, S.L., Jr. and Kuehl, S.A. Floodplain processes in the Bengal Basin and the storage of Ganges-Brahmaputra river sediment: an accretion study using 137Cs and 210Pb geochronology. Sedimentary Geology, v. 121(3-4), p. 239-258, 1998.

Goodbred, S.L., Jr., Wright, E.E., and Hine, A.C. Sea-level change and storm-surge deposition in a Late Holocene Florida salt marsh. Journal of Sedimentary Research, v. 68(2), p. 240-252, 1998.

Goodbred, S.L., Jr. and Hine, A.C. Coastal storm deposition: Salt-marsh response to a severe extratropical storm, March 1993, west-central Florida. Geology, v. 23, p. 679-682, 1995.