This research award will help the investigator to reconstruct balanced paleographic maps of the Western Europe and the adjacent North Atlantic shelves and basins using the available information on the sediment types, their thicknesses, ages and porosities for the onshore and offshore areas and global sedimentary mass balance equations. This technique of loading the eroded sediments back on to the continent and then calculating the continental topography and thereby arriving at the uplift and subsidence rates is extraodinarily imaginative and innovative. The PI using a similar data base and mass balance calculations was extremely successful in reconstructing paleotopography, paleodrainage basins, paleobathymetry and past uplifts and subsidences of the North American continent and the adjoining areas for the last 70 MY. Such balanced paleogeographic maps will provide calibration for the sea level curve for the Western Europe and will help in determining the significance of epeirogenic movements vis-a-vis eustatic sea level changes in each of the drainage and depositional basins. Also this modeling technique will produce the kind of topographic information that is required for sophisticated climate and ocean circulation modeling. During the 1st and 2nd year, the PI while on his sabbatical in University of Munich will gather the necessary data. This will be followed by rigorous computer intensive work to generate paleographic maps. This study represents a wholly new approach in the determination of paleo sea level rises and falls, a subject of much investigation at the present time. Dr. Hay is an extremely capable scientist who for the last decade took leadership in pioneering research in a variety of subjects and there is no doubt that the proposed study will
