Thursday 26 & Friday 27 March, 2015

By Eelco J. Rohling
Research School of Earth Sciences, the Australian National University, Canberra 2601, Australia
Utrecht University, Earth Sciences building, room N112

Eelco Rohling:

“I will be going through the development of sea-level records, from both from corals and from sediment cores from marginal seas. I will discuss how and why these archives record sea level, and how we can get to that information for the past in a quantitative manner. This leads to an extensive discussion about uncertainties and how to deal with them (no, not to ignore them…exactly the opposite of that!). If we want to make comparisons with other records of environmental change, then chronology is all important. For U-series dated corals, this is not so much of a problem, but for sea-level records from marginal seas, we need to be inventive. I will discuss how sound chronologies can be built and tested. All of this may suggest that we have solved all the problems, but that is not true. Both for corals records and for records from marginal seas, there remain important challenges. Those mostly come to the fore through open and honest assessment of uncertainties. I will go through that, highlight some of the major remaining challenges as I see them, and discuss with the course participants their own views of the challenges, to help them evaluate the published records for what they are (progress, not final solutions…).

Finally, after we have identified the main challenges, we will have a discussion on how to potentially address those. The course will be mostly lecture and discussion-based. Some of the discussions will be organized in a break-out group structure. We may also need to go through some calculations, so calculators and pen+paper, or laptops with basic calculation software will be useful.”

 (Lectures: Intro, Highlights; remaining challenges, opening opportunities; exercises, and interactions/discussions)

 Information and registration: Marjolein Mullen, m.mullen@uu.nlbefore Wednesday 18 March 2015