T149 Reading the Record of the Rocks: Resolving the Tectonic and Eustatic Signals in Stratigraphic Successions I: In Honor of Don Swift on his 70th Birthday
Tuesday, 18 October 2005
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
THE IMPORTANCE OF GLACIO-HYDRO-ISOSTASY WITHIN THE LATE QUATERNARY/HOLOCENE SEA-LEVEL HISTORY OF THE GULF OF MEXICO: LESSONS FOR STRATIGRAPHIC CORRELATION
Paper number: T149-7
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 9:20 AM – 9:35 AM
Authors
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Kurt LambeckThe Australian National Univ, Canberra, N/A
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Tony PurcellThe Australian National Univ, Canberra, N/A
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John B. AndersonRice University, Houston, TX
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Antonio RodriguezUniversity of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL
Abstract
A 30 m discrepancy between sea-level records within the Gulf of Mexico and other “global” records has been known in the literature for over 50 years. Many hypotheses have been proposed to explain this discrepancy including sedimentary loading due to the Mississippi River and the effects of radiocarbon reservoirs. Using quantitative numerical models and over 50 new radiocarbon dates obtained from shallow marine systems across the Gulf of Mexico, we test several hypotheses that might explain this discrepancy. We found that glacio-hydro-isostasy with an appropriate ice model for the Laurentide Ice sheet provides the best solution. Furthermore, this work has important implications for the ice sheet reconstructions for the Laurentide ice sheet and traditional sequence stratigraphic methods for correlating strata on passive continental margins.