The North West Shelf of Australia is an extensive tropical carbonate ramp and forms an important template for the interpretation of similar systems in the sedimentary record. Yet, little is known about the development of the distally steepened ramp from the middle to late Quaternary, a period of high frequency glacioeustatic changes in sea level and climate. This research describes core and seismic-reflection data from a mid- to outer ramp transect at the Northwest Shelf. Carbonates occurring within the studied site can be subdivided by color into light and dark sections. These differences are linked to composition and mineralogy, which in turn are related to changes in the sedimentary environment. Based on this relationship, reflectance of visible light (i.e. lightness) can be used as a high-resolution proxy to delineate different facies within the core.

Lightness was measured on split cores using an Ocean Optics USB4000 spectrophotometer using a step-size of 2.5 cm.