accommodation

distally steepened ramp

ecological accommodation

eustasy

homoclinal ramp

low angle ramp

massive steep margin

physical accommodation

Reef-rimmed modern platforms are examples of this kind of ecological accommodation (Pomar and Kendall, 2007). Both the ancient and modern examples in fact have the highest known shallow-water ecological accommodation. Ancient reef-rimmed platforms and their matching modern settings have an ecologically driven capacity to build above the hydrodynamic shelf equilibrium profile. Here large corals and encrusting algae build a rigid, wave-resistant framework up to sea level. This acts as a “wave-energy dam” along the shelf margin, often restricting circulation in the back-reef area, so that a wide, low-energy lagoon develops. In the lagoon, the base level for sediment accumulation is much shallower than in the reef and forereef, and these latter are exposed to the erosive forces of waves coming from the open sea. An example of a platform of this kind is that of the Llucmajor reef of Mallorca, which exhibits high-frequency heterogeneous depositional sequences that have a high ecological accommodation.(Pomar and Kendall 2008).  These examples of physical accommodation for carrbonate systems, and in particular platform exhibit a diversity that is a result of a wide variety of carbonate production processes and mechanisms that cause their redistribution within the basin. Each different biotic system has a unique competence (ecological accommodation) for building above and below the hydrodynamic shelf equilibrium profile of Swift and Thorne (1991). Thus production depends on biological evolution including ecological requirements (substrate, competitive displacement, etc); the type, size and efficiency of the carbonate factory, which in turn, depends on the area available to thriving carbonate producing biota (basin floor physiography), on intrabasinal conditions (nutrients, temperature, water energy, water transparency, salinity, oxygen, Ca2+ and CO2 concentrations, Mg/Ca ratio, alkalinity, etc). Furthermore, sediment dispersal depends on the interaction between the physical characteristics of the different types of sediment being produced (grain size, bulk density as determined by porosity within the grain e.g. intraskeletal porosity, etc) and the hydraulic energy ambient to the production loci, and its modification by binding, trapping, baffling and framework building (Ginsburg and Lowenstam, 1958) as well as by early cementation processes.

So, ecological accommodation matches the accommodation of Jervey (1998) as the "the space available for potential sediment accumulation" but with some less than subtle considerations. This ecological accommodation represents the "potential" space available for carbonate sediment to fill and is the combined product of rates of carbonate sediment accumulation as modulated by the ecological requirements of the carbonate producing organisms, movement of the sea surface (eustasy: global sea level measured from a datum such as the center of earth) and movement of the sea floor (tectonics).

References
Ginsburg, RN, and Lowenstam, HA, 1958, The influence of marine bottom communities on the depositional environments of sediments: Journal of Geology, v. 66, p. 310-318.
Jervey, M.T., 1988, Quantitative geological modeling of siliciclastic rock Sequences and their seismic expression, in Wilgus, C.K., Hasting, B.S., Kendall, C.G.St.C, Posamentier, HW, Ross, CA, and Van Wagoner, JC, eds., Sea-level changes: an integrated approach: Tulsa, OK, Society of Economic
Paleontologists and Mineralogists, Special Publication No. 42, p. 47-69.
Posamentier, Henry W., and George P. Allen, 1999, "Siliciclastic Sequence Stratigraphy - Concepts and Applications", published by the Society of Economic Petrologists and Paleontologists, 216 pages.
Pomar, L., 2001 (a), Ecological control of sedimentary Accommodation: evolution from a Carbonate ramp to rimmed shelf, Upper Miocene, Balearic Islands: Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, v. 175, p. 249-272.
Pomar, L., 2001 (b), Types of Carbonate platforms, a genetic approach: Basin Research, v. 13, p. 313-334.
Pomar, L. and Kendall, C. G. St. C., 2008, Architecture of carbonate platforms: A response to hydrodynamics and evolving ecology. In: Controls on carbonate Platform and Reef Development – J. Lukasik & A. Simo (Eds.). ISBN 978-1-56576-130-8, SEPM Special Publication No. 89, p. 187-216
Swift, D.J.P., and Thorne, J.A., 1991, Sedimentation on continental margins, I: a general model for shelf sedimentation, in Swift, D.J.P., Oertel, G..F, Tillman, R.W., and Thorne, J.A., eds., Shelf sand and sandstone bodies, International Association of Sedimentologists Special Publication, No. 14, p. 3-31.