Puglia 2003 -Final Conference Project IGCP 437 Coastal Environmental Change During Sea-Level Highstands: A Global Synthesis with implications for management of future coastal change Project 437 Evidence for late Holocene sea-level rise and Greenland Ice S

• Main Authors: Otranto / Taranto -Puglia, Long A, Roberts D, Dawson S
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2003
• Subjects: Greenland; Disko bugt; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.1079.7262; http://www.igcp437finalconference.unisalento.it/AbstractBook/Long153_154.pdf

Abstract There is widespread geomorphological evidence that the Greenland Ice Sheet has expanded since the onset of the climatic cooling associated with the "Neoglacial" from c. 4000 cal. yr BP In this paper we present the results of a detailed study of the evidence for late Holocene RSL change in Disko Bugt, a large marine embayment in West Greenland New RSL data are presented from a site within the Jakobshavns Isbrae icefjord, the closest RSL site yet examined to the Greenland Ice Sheet in Disko Bugt. A contemporary isolation basin, with a sill c. -4m below mean sea-level, records evidence for a tripartite depositional sequence that comprises marine, freshwater and then marine sediments conditions. These sediments record the initial uplift of the basin and its isolation from the sea, followed by its submergence in the late Holocene. Diatoms from the sample core demonstrate these changes in environment particularly clearly, whilst bulk AMS radiocarbon dates provide a core chronology. The basin provides evidence for a rise in mean sea-level at this site of at least 4 m during the late Holocene. The protracted period of freshwater conditions recorded when the basin lay above the marine influence indicates that the magnitude of neoglacial RSL rise is likely to have exceeded this value.