“Quantifying Holocene Sea Level Change Using Intertidal Foraminifera: Lessons from the British Isles”
by Benjamin P. Horton and Robin J. Edwards

Concerns surrounding future climate change and possible accelerations in the rate of sea-level rise have focused attention on linking short-term instrumental and satellite records with longer-term geologically based reconstructions of relative sea level. Salt-marsh foraminifera have been used to reconstruct Holocene sea-level changes from coastlines around the world. In this work, we compile the results of surface foraminiferal surveys from fifteen study sites from the coasts of Great Britain, and Ireland. These data, which comprise 236 samples and 84 species, are used to summarize the contemporary distributions of intertidal foraminifera and to examine the environmental controls governing them. In addition, an updated taxonomy of typical intertidal species is presented. These modern foraminiferal data are used to develop predictive transfer functions capable of inferring the past elevation of a sediment sample relative to the tidal frame from its fossil foraminiferal content. The performance of these transfer functions is examined with reference to the possible significance of life versus death assemblages, infaunal foraminifera, and other taphonomic processes. These results demonstrate that the careful combination of foraminiferal estimates of paleomarsh-surface elevation with detailed lithostratigraphy and chronostratigraphy can produce high-resolution records of relative sea-level change with sufficient resolution to detect low-magnitude variability but long enough duration to reliably establish climate-ocean relationships and secular trends.

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