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Please note that this session was withdrawn and is no longer available in the respective programme. This withdrawal might have been the result of a merge with another session.

GD3.3

The geodynamics of sea level change
Convener: Nicolas Flament  | Co-Convener: Clinton Conrad 

The chronology of eustatic sea level change is usually established from the sedimentary record by applying the principles of sequence stratigraphy to continental shelves and interior basins, assuming vertical stability with respect to Earth's deep interior. However, advances in modelling the solid Earth over the last 25 years have shown that vertical displacements of the Earth's surface may occur in the absence of significant associated deformation. Solid Earth processes affecting sea level include elastic flexure, postglacial rebound, dynamic topography, changes in the volume of ocean basins and changes in the amount of water stored in the Earth's mantle. Together, these processes span spatial scales between ~100 km and 10,000 km, and temporal scales from geologically instantaneous (< 0.1 Myr) to ~1 Gyr. This large range of spatial and temporal scales imply that 1/ solid Earth dynamics may be relevant to all stratigraphic cycles, 2/ on geologically short time scales, both solid Earth and climate processes affect sea level and 3/ on long time scales, establishing the chronology of global ("eustatic") Phanerozoic sea levels requires a good control on regional ("eurybatic") sea level change. This session aims to revisit sea level change in the light of solid Earth processes by bringing together observations from the sedimentary record and models of the geodynamic and climatological processes that affect sea level.