Late Devensian and Holocene relative sea‐level changes on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, UK

Selby, Katherine; Smith, David E.

doi:10.1002/jqs.1012

Cited by 26 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…In terms of the pattern of relative sea-level change, it will be noted that the modelled graphs do not show any fluctuations, except for a change in the rate of rise around 6000 14 C a BP. Thus, on Skye, Selby and Smith (2007) record that the rise in middle Holocene relative sea level was interrupted by a fall at ca. 6000 14 C a BP, while Lambeck (1995b) depicts relative sea levels some 80 km west of Harris as having reached $À5 m below present at ca.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Holocene relative sea‐level changes in Harris, Outer Hebrides, Scotland, UK

Jordan

Smith

Dawson

et al. 2010

J Quaternary Science

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Evidence for relative sea-level changes during the middle and late Holocene is examined from two locations on the Atlantic coast of Harris, Outer Hebrides, Scotland, using morphological mapping and survey, stratigraphical, grain size and diatom analysis, and radiocarbon dating. The earliest event identified is a marine flood, which occurred after 7982-8348 cal. a (7370 AE 80 14 C a) BP, when the sea crossed a threshold lying at À0.08 m Ordnance Datum Newlyn (OD) (À2.17 m mean high water springs (MHWS)) before withdrawing. This could have been due to a storm or to the Holocene Storegga Slide tsunami. By 6407-6122 cal. a (5500 AE 60 14 C a) BP, relative sea levels had begun to fall from a sandflat surface with an indicated MHWS level of between 0.08 and À1.96 m (À2.01 to À4.05 m). This fall reached between À0.30 and À2.35 m (À2.39 to À4.44 m) after 5841-5050 cal. a (4760 AE 130 14 C a) BP, but was succeeded by a relative sea-level rise which reached between 0.54 and À1.57 m (À1.55 to À3.66 m) by 5450-4861 cal. a (4500 AE 100 14 C a) BP. This rise continued, possibly with an interruption, until a second sandflat surface was reached between 2.34 and À0.26 m (0.25 to À2.35 m) between 2952-3375 cal. a (3000 AE 80 14 C a) and 1948-2325 cal. a (2130 AE 70 14 C a) BP, before present levels were reached. The regressive episode from the earliest sandflat is correlated with the abandonment of the Main Postglacial Shoreline. It is maintained that the fluctuations in relative sea level recorded can be correlated with similar events elsewhere on the periphery of the glacio-isostatic centre and may therefore reflect secular changes in nearshore sea surface levels. Despite published evidence from trim lines of differential ice sheet loading across the area, no evidence of variations in uplift between the locations concerned could be found.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Holocene relative sea‐level changes in Harris, Outer Hebrides, Scotland, UK

Jordan

Smith

Dawson

et al. 2010

J Quaternary Science

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“…The most widely employed approach in northwest Scotland involves isolation basins which, in this region of isostatic uplift, are preserved above current sea level and record phases of marine transgression and regression (e.g. Shennan et al, 1994Shennan et al, , 1995aShennan et al, , 1995bShennan et al, , 1996Shennan et al, , 1999Shennan et al, , 2000Shennan et al, , 2005Shennan et al, , 2006bSelby and Smith, 2007). The successful application of this approach in the Morar region of western Scotland, resulted in the reconstruction of a 16,000 yr, near-continuous RSL record at Arisaig (Fig.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Late Glacial to Holocene relative sea-level change in Assynt, northwest Scotland, UK

et al. 2015

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Relative sea-level change (RSL), from the Late Glacial through to the late Holocene, is reconstructed for the Assynt region, northwest Scotland, based on bio-and lithostratigraphical analysis. Four new radiocarbon-dated sea-level index points help constrain RSL change for the Late Glacial to the late Holocene. These new data, in addition to published material, capture the RSL fall during the Late Glacial and the rise and fall associated with the midHolocene highstand. Two of these index points constrain the Late Glacial RSL history in Assynt for the first time, reconstructing RSL falling from 2.47 ± 0.59 m OD to 0.15 ± 0.59 m OD at c. 14,000-15,000 cal yr BP. These new data test model predictions of glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA), particularly during the early deglacial period which is currently poorly constrained throughout the British Isles. Whilst the empirical data from the midto late-Holocene to present matches quite well with the recent GIA model output, there is a relatively poor fit between the timing of the Late Glacial RSL fall and early Holocene RSL rise. This mismatch, also evident elsewhere in northwest Scotland, may result from uncertainties associated with both the global and local ice components of GIA models. IntroductionThe United Kingdom has been the focus of sea-level research for a number of decades (e.g. Devoy, 1982;Tooley, 1982;Shennan et al., 2005;Shennan et al., 2006a). The British and Irish Ice Sheet (BIIS) provides a compact case study suitable for disentangling the relative contributions of eustasy, deformation of the ocean geoid, isostasy and local processes to regional records of post-Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) relative sea-level (RSL) change (Flemming, 1982;Shennan, 1989). The pattern of RSL change in Scotland is of particular interest as it is dominated by a complex spatial pattern of glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) caused by the proximity of the centre of the LGM BIIS, and the peripheral effects of the Fennoscandian ice sheet (Peltier, 1998). As a consequence, post-LGM records of RSL change in Scotland have the potential to refine, both the ice-sheet history and Earth rheology components of GIA models. The Arisaig sea-level curve from western Scotland, which is currently the longest and most complete RSL archive for the British Isles (Shennan et al., 1996;Shennan et al., 2005), is a particularly important test of GIA models (e.g. Shennan et al., 2006a;Bradley et al., 2011). Many other locations, particularly those close to the centre of the LGM BIIS, currently have very limited records of past sea level, particularly covering the Late Glacial period, with spatially and temporally disparate sea-level index points. The aim of this paper is to develop new records of past sea level for the understudied Assynt region of northwest Scotland (Fig. 1), extending the current record, from Coigach (Shennan et al., 2000), beyond the mid-Holocene. Offshore geological records from northwest Scotland show that this region consisted of a series of LGM ice streams which channelled ice offsho...

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“…There is a long history of sea‐level observation in the British Isles (e.g. Sissons 1966; Sissons & Brooks 1971; Tooley 1974, 1982; Dawson 1984; Shennan et al 1995; Selby & Smith 2007) and this has lead to the development of a high‐quality and extensive regional data base (Shennan et al 2006a). This data base has been employed to determine empirical estimates of GIA‐induced land motion (Smith et al 2000; Dawson et al 2002; Fretwell et al 2004) as well as constrain parameters in geophysical models of the GIA process (Lambeck 1993a,b, 1995; Lambeck et al 1996; Shennan et al 2000, 2002, 2006b; Peltier et al 2002; Milne et al 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Glacial isostatic adjustment of the British Isles: new constraints from GPS measurements of crustal motion

Bradley¹,

Milne

Teferle

et al. 2009

Geophysical Journal International

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S U M M A R YWe compared estimates of crustal velocities within Great Britain based on continuous global positioning system (CGPS) measurements to predictions from a model of glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA). The observed and predicted values for vertical motion are highly correlated indicating that GIA is the dominant geodynamic process contributing to this field. In contrast, motion of the Eurasian plate dominates the horizontal motion component. A model of plate motion was adopted to remove this signal in order to estimate intraplate horizontal motion associated with GIA. However, a coherent pattern of horizontal motion was not evident in the resulting velocity field. We adopted a recently published model of the British-Irish ice sheet to predict vertical crustal motion for a large number of spherically symmetric Earth viscosity models. Our results show that the adopted ice model is capable of producing a high-quality fit to the observations. The CGPS-derived estimates of vertical motion provide a useful constraint on the average value of viscosity within the upper mantle. Values of model lithospheric thickness and lower mantle viscosity are less well resolved, however. A suite of predictions based on an alternative ice model indicates that the vertical motion data are relatively insensitive to uncertainties in the ice loading history and so the constraints on upper mantle viscosity are robust.

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Late Devensian and Holocene relative sea‐level changes on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, UK

Cited by 26 publications

References 35 publications

Holocene relative sea‐level changes in Harris, Outer Hebrides, Scotland, UK

Holocene relative sea‐level changes in Harris, Outer Hebrides, Scotland, UK

Late Glacial to Holocene relative sea-level change in Assynt, northwest Scotland, UK

Glacial isostatic adjustment of the British Isles: new constraints from GPS measurements of crustal motion

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