Climate, tectonics, and life influence the flux and caliber of sediment transported across Earth's surface. These environmental conditions can leave behind imprints in the Earth's sedimentary archive, but signals of climate, tectonic, and biologic change are not always present in the stratigraphic record. Deterministic and stochastic surface dynamics collectively act as a stratigraphic filter, impeding the burial and preservation of environmental signals in sedimentary deposits. Such impediments form a central challenge to accurately reconstructing environmental conditions through Earth's history. Emergent and self‐organized length and timescales in landscapes, which are themselves influenced by regional environmental conditions, define spatial and temporal sedimentation patterns in basins and fundamentally control the likelihood of environmental signal preservation in sedimentary deposits. Properly characterizing these scales provides a key avenue for incorporating the known “imperfections” of the stratigraphic record into paleoenvironmental reconstructions. These insights are necessary for answering both basic and applied science questions, including our ability to reconstruct the Earth system response to prior episodes of climate, tectonic, or land cover change.

中文翻译：

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缓冲，不完整和切丝：读取不完美地层记录的挑战

气候，构造和生命影响着穿越地球表面的沉积物的通量和口径。这些环境条件可能会在地球的沉积档案中留下印记，但是地层记录中并不总是存在气候，构造和生物变化的信号。确定性和随机表面动力学共同充当地层学过滤器，阻碍了沉积物中环境信号的掩埋和保存。这些障碍构成了通过地球历史准确重建环境条件的主要挑战。景观中出现的，自组织的长度和时间尺度本身受区域环境条件的影响，确定盆地的时空沉积模式，从根本上控制沉积物中环境信号保存的可能性。正确地刻画这些比例尺为将地层记录的已知“缺陷”纳入古环境重建提供了关键途径。这些见解对于回答基础科学和应用科学问题都是必需的，包括我们重建地球系统对先前气候，构造或土地覆被变化的反应的能力。