Zsanett Szilagyi

SSP Stratigraphy, Sedimentology and Palaeontology

The 2025 Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (OSPP) Award is awarded to Zsanett Szilagyi for the poster/PICO entitled:

Subsurface dissection of Holocene inter-reef Halimeda bioherms: morphology, facies and latitudinal variations in the northern Great Barrier Reef (Szilagyi, Z.; Nothdurft, L.; Webster, J.; Duce, S.; McNeil, M.; Braga, J.-C.; Graham, T.; Behrens, B. C.; Yokoyama, Y.; Beamen, R.; Paumard, V.; Shragge, J.; Nau, A.; Berry, C.; Goh, S.; Reeves, J.; Picton, L.; Bostock, H.)

Click here to download the poster/PICO file.

Zsanett Szilagyi is a PhD candidate at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia, supervised by Dr Luke Nothdurft (QUT) and Prof. Jody Webster (University of Sydney). Her research investigates accumulations of Halimeda calcareous green algae sediment as mounds (bioherms) on the inter-reef areas of northern Great Barrier Reef (GBR) as part of “Project HALO: Halimeda bioherm origins, function and fate in the northern Great Barrier Reef”. She aims to understand the morphology of the seafloor and the development of these bioherms over millennial timescale throughout the Holocene.

In her EGU25 contribution, Zsanett Szilagyi presented the first sub-meter resolution bathymetric maps over Halimeda bioherms combined with vibrocore samples to showcase their complexity both on the surface and subsurface. She introduced a novel approach for identifying and classifying bioherms that contributes to more accurate mapping and monitoring of the GBR shelf environments. Her work also reveals intricate internal structure of Halimeda bioherms, offering new insight into their formation processes, morphological evolution, and ecological significance.