Continental shelf drowned landscapes: Submerged geomorphological and sedimentary record of the youngest cycles

Abstract

Continental shelves today find themselves largely submerged as a consequence of the sea-level rise in the last 20,000 years, the time since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), the period of maximum ice mass and minimum ocean volume within the Last Glacial Cycle. Their geomorphology, however, is far from controlled by marine processes alone. Shallow parts of the shelves were land during most of the past 120,000 years (the last full interglacial–glacial cycle), and deeper parts of the current shelves were coastal zones for most of that time, and this goes for older cycles too. To describe and understand the geomorphology of continental shelf drowned landscapes requires combining the knowledge on marine and terrestrial processes and to take into account both climatic and sea-level cyclicities in the larger picture of shelf evolution. With this special issue, we hope to interest the Geomorphology readership in the peculiarities of Continental Shelf Drowned Landscapes and their evolution during the youngest climatic–eustatic cycles. The special issue emerges from two international meetings organised in 2011. These were (i) the CMP-commission sponsored session on ‘Drowned landscapes and continental shelves during the last glacial cycles’ at the XVIII INQUA congress (21–27 July 2011) in Bern, Switzerland, and (ii) the 5th IGCP526 conference (13–16 Sept 2011) held in Sidney, British Columbia, Canada, on ‘Continental Shelves: Risks, Resources and Record of the Past’.