Quaternary sea-level history of the United States

Authors

• Daniel R. Muhs, U.S. Geological SurveyFollow
• John F. Wehmiller, University of Delaware
• Kathleen R. Simmons, U.S. Geological SurveyFollow
• Linda L. York, U.S. National Park Service

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

2004

Citation

In: The Quaternary Period in the United States, ed. A.R. Gillespie, S.C. Porter, & B.F. Atwater, Developments in Quaternary Science, vol. 1 (Amsterdam et al.: Elsevier, 2004), pp. 147–183.

DOI:10.1016/S1571-0866(03)01008-X

Comments

U.S. government work

Abstract

In the past 30 years, there have been tremendous advances in our understanding of Quaternary sea-level history, due directly to developments in Quaternary dating methods, particularly uranium-series disequilibrium and amino acid racemization. Another reason for this progress is that coastline history can now be tied to the oxygen-isotope record of foraminifera in deep-sea cores. Furthermore, both records have been linked to climate change on the scale of glacial-interglacial cycles that are thought to be forced by changes in Earth-Sun geometry, or “orbital forcing” (Milankovitch, 1941).