Research Seminar

Tuesday 19^th October, E0.05 from 1.00-2.00 pm.  

Lunch, and an opportunity to chat with the speaker, will be in room E402 from 12:30. All are invited!

Dr Scott Smithers, James Cook University, Queensland Australia

'Coral microatoll records of sea-level change in the Indian and Pacific Oceans'

Coral microatolls are intertidal corals with morphologies that can accurately record sea level position at high resolution and with high fidelity.  They occur in mid-ocean settings, where long-term instrumental sea level records are scarce, where geophysical models predict important evidence of 'far-field' sea level trends during the postglacial transgression should be located, and where many low-lying islands likely to be directly affected by projected future sea level changes are concentrated. 

This seminar presents an overview of microatolls as sea-level indicators before presenting the results of several sea level investigations using microatolls in both the Indian and Pacific Oceans.  The focus in on key debates to do with the occurrence and elevation of a mid-Holocene highstand in the Indian Ocean, and the reality or otherwise of oscillating sea level during the late Holocene in the Pacific, as advocated by other researchers.  The seminar concludes with an account of some recent research in Papua New Guinea, where the inhabitants of an extremely remote low-lying atoll are being pressured by the government to migrate due to sea level rise issues, but where microatolls suggests there has actually been relative sea level fall.