The infilling of a terminal floodplain wetland complex

Flood plain–wetland complexes are mosaics of physical units and the sediments contained within these various units often display spatial and temporal complexity. This paper reconstructs the environmental history of a mosaic of geomorphic units within a large terminal flood plain–wetland complex in southeastern Australia in order to identify how the sediment character of the mosaic has changed through time. Sediment cores, up to 14 m in depth, were extracted from one flood plain and three lake units. Stratigraphy and multivariate analysis on these cores reveal a complex environmental history with sediment character highly variable in both time and space. All four geomorphic units—lake and flood plain—have undergone a convergent evolution from unique initial states. This study highlights how numerical methods, in association with standard sedimentological techniques, can assist in unravelling the environmental history of a temporally and spatially diverse landscape