Correlation and Chronology of Marine Transgressions in Western Alaska (Collaborative Research)

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Late Cenozoic marine deposits blanketing terraces and coastal plains in western and northern Alaska provide an exceptionally detailed record of high sea level events, the most complete known in any part of the Arctic. Interbedded with glacial drift sequences, these deposits contain an invaluable almanac of Arctic paleoclimates, and establish the time of origin and much of the subsequent history of the Arctic Ocean ice cover. Fossils in the late Cenozoic marine deposits also record both marine and continental dispersal events and thus supplement and interoceanic correlations. This investigation will apply amino-acid geochronology, thermoluminescence, and paleomagnetic studies to marine transgressive deposits exposed on St. Lawrence Island, Seward Peninsula, and around Kotzebue Sound in order to evaluate and correct previously published age correlations. The study will thus result in a much firmer knowledge of the extent and timing of sea-level changes in western and northern Alaska and will provide an extremely useful series of time planes for the development of synoptic knowledge of Arctic paleoclimates and paleo-oceanographic regimes.