There is growing evidence that Antarctic, and possible Subarctic, marine.based ice sheets experienced rapid collapse as world sea level rose to its present position after 18,000 B.C. Individual events probably took place within 1,000 years and resulted in rapid rises in sea level of several meters. These events would have caused shoreline translations of tens of kilometers on continental shelves of gentle gradient, such as that offshore Texas. Existing marine geologic data from this region indicate that as many as four relative stillstands and associated barrier trends existed on the northern Texas shelf during the late Wisconsin and Holocene; these features are separated by up to 30 kilometers and represent rapid "jumps" in the paleoshoreline. The proposed research will examine the distribution, character and age of sediments within buried incised valleys and their associated estuaries. The objective is to develop a high frequency sequence stratigraphy for the region which depicts the nature of recent (<10,000 BP) sea level events and the manner in which these events have influenced the evolution of the North Texas coast and its estuaries.
