eustasy
/ˈjuːstəsi
/noun [mass noun]
A change of sea level throughout the world, caused typically by movements of parts of the earth’s crust or melting of glaciers.Coastal ecosystems have been forced to migrate staggering distances since the waning of Pleistocene glaciers began to drive the postglacial rise in global sea level, termed eustasy by geologists....
- Within this rhythm, alternations between PDF and WDF units record the interplay between sediment supply, basin subsidence, climate and eustasy, which caused repeated minor progradational and retrogradational rhythms.
- Moreover, glacial eustasy is rejected because of the lack of evidence for widespread glaciation at the appropriate stratigraphic level and because the required kilometre-scale drawdown far exceeds that expected through glaciation.
Derivatives
eustatic
/ adjective ...- Nature of Quaternary sea-level changes A detailed record of Quaternary eustatic sea-level changes has been derived from studying oceanic cores taken at selected sites where there is a continuous record of sedimentation.
- Surprisingly, the most positive carbon isotope values correspond to the most positive oxygen isotope values (and hence lowest palaeotemperatures) and to a period characterized by inferred eustatic sea-level fall.
- Higher-latitude boreal sections have received substantially less attention because of both their relative inaccessibility and the reported absence of Late Permian strata attributed to a major eustatic sea-level fall.
Origin
1940s: back-formation from eustatic, coined in German from Greek eu 'well' + statikos 'static'.