Modern perspectives

Morphological approaches

Morphology and stratigraphy

Neotectonics

Rock platforms

Glacier margins and sea level

Carselands

Biostratigraphy

Storegga Slide tsunami

Patterns of land uplift

Climate change and sea level

Lake coring in isolation basins in NW Iceland by the Univ. of Durham.

solation basins

In the last decade or so, the detailed stratigraphical studies in the carselands have been complemented in areas of the west coast where the coastal landscape is often one of small basins, many of which contain the sediments of former sea levels. These basins, termed “isolation basins”, contain marine sediments which accumulated during high sea levels, but then became isolated as sea level fell. Investigations of these features has been based upon an approach developed in Norway. Within many of these basins, more than one episode of marine flooding is recorded, the episodes separated by peat or other organic material, thus as with the carseland stratigraphies, a framework of radiocarbon dates can be obtained (e.g. Shennan et al., 1995; 2000). A particular value of these basins has been that much older events can be dated than was the case for studies in the carseland areas, with for the first time reliable dates for the last 17,000 years becoming available, although because these basins only provide evidence for sea level at “snapshots” in time, no continuous changes can be identified.