Reconstructing the relative sea level of the Black Sea during the last glacial period

The Black Sea is currently a nearly enclosed basin connected to the Mediterranean via the Bosphorus Strait (sill depth at 35 m bsl), the Marmara Sea, and the Dardanelles (65 m bsl). During the last glacial period, this connection was severed due to global sea level drop, falling lower than the sill depths. While the early Holocene reconnection of the Black Sea to the Mediterranean has been extensively studied and debated, our understanding of the Black Sea’s Sea level curve during the last glacial period remains largely rooted in foundational research. Notably, mid-to-late 20th-century studies by geoscientists such as Panin, Tchepalyga, and Scheglov utilized U-series dating of coastal terraces to construct early reconstructions. These studies suggested several high-stands, incompatible with the global sea level curve. 
Recent research focusing on (1) the evolution of the Caspian Sea to date the timing and extend of the transgressions where some are claimed to have reached to the Black Sea basin via Manych strait (50 m asl) , (2) the late-Pleistocene variations on the extend of the Fenno-Scandinavian ice sheet and (3) detailed analyses of deep-sea cores and stalagmite records, have significantly enhanced our understanding of the region's last glacial evolution, providing high-resolution data extending back beyond MIS 6. 
A multiyear bi-lateral program, namely BlackSea-Rise has been carried on along the Black Sea Coastal Zone supported by the TUBITAK and BAS (220N053). The goal of the project is to investigate the late Pleistocene coastal record to reveal the past-sea level, environmental changes and determine the differential uplift along the 1200 km coastline between Sinop (Türkiye) and Varna (Bulgaria). After 3 years of intense field and laboratory work, the BlackSea-Rise program enabled us to thoroughly inspect the nature of exposed uplifted coastal record (fossil beach and dune) and produced over 100 absolute age determinations (luminescence, radiocarbon and U series), grain size characterization of sediments, identification of mollusc fauna and stable-radiogenic isotopes at 16 distinct focus sites. This space-time dataset is used to reconstruct the relative sea-level curve of the Black Sea and the explore the dynamics of the five past transgressions for the last 120 thousand years.