Postglacial Relative Sea-Level History of the Prince Rupert Area, British Columbia, Canada
Quaternary Science Reviews 153 (2016) 156e191 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Quaternary Science Reviews journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quascirev Postglacial relative sea-level history of the Prince Rupert area, British Columbia, Canada * Bryn Letham a, , Andrew Martindale a, Rebecca Macdonald a, Eric Guiry a, Jacob Jones a, Kenneth M. Ames b a Department of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, 6303 NW Marine Drive, Vancouver, V6K 1Z1, Canada b Department of Anthropology, Portland State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, OR, 97207, USA article info abstract Article history: This paper presents a history of relative sea level (RSL) change for the last 15,000 years in the Prince Received 3 July 2016 Rupert region on the northern coast of British Columbia, Canada. One hundred twenty-three radiocarbon Received in revised form ages of organic material from isolation basin cores, sediment sequence exposures, and archaeological 5 October 2016 sites having a recognized relation to past sea levels constrain postglacial RSL. The large number of new Accepted 10 October 2016 measurements relating to past sea-level provides a well constrained RSL curve that differs in significant ways from previously published results. After deglaciation following the Last Glacial Maximum, the region experienced an isostatically-induced rapid RSL drop from as much 50 m asl to as low as À6.3 m asl Keywords: Relative sea level change in as little as a few centuries between 14,500 BP and 13,500 BP. After a lowstand below current sea level Paleoshorelines for about 2000 years during the terminal Pleistocene, RSL rose again to a highstand at least 6 m asl after Northwest Coast the end of the Younger Dryas.
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