Information about past environments is stored in sedimentary rocks via biogeochemical markers stored in the sediments. Using these markers, the signal of paleoclimate and other environmental factors can be reconstructed from the strata. However, because sediment accumulation occurs stochastically, the stratigraphic record is often difficult to reconstruct with confidence. It is generally thought that with a sufficient sample size though, noise averages out, and the true signal can be reconstructed. This assumption is valid when the statistics of erosion and deposition remain steady throughout the interval of interest. In fact, it is known that changes in climate can alter the statistics of erosion and deposition, but the impact of this effect on paleoclimate reconstructions remains poorly understood. This dataset describes a set of physical delta experiments conducted at the Tulane University Sediment Dynamics and Stratigraphy Laboratory. Throughout the experiment, the level of flooding intensity that the delta was exposed to alternated between two end-member values, with transitions of varying durations. We monitored channel dynamics, and reconstructed synthetic climate records from the strata to see how the changing statistics of sediment accumulation impacted the preservation of environmental signals in the strata. This dataset is an HDF5 dataset, which is a general format. The data largely consist of a set of 3D arrays that contain 2D topography and imagery data, where the third dimension is time. Each data object is paired with a 1D vector that links datasets across the time dimension, since data were collected at different intervals. The appropriate linking datasets are also included as CSVs.

E.B. acknowledges support from a Pathfinder Fellowship provided by CUAHSI with support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Cooperative Agreement No. EAR-1849458. E.B. additionally acknowledges support from SEPM via a Student Assistance Grant.