SEA-LEVEL TENDENCIES AND SCALE: A METHODOLOGY FOR LOCAL TO GLOBAL ANALYSES OF RELATIVE SEA-LEVEL DATA?

Studies of local sea-level change history lack any accepted formal methodology. Treatment of data remains essentially inductive, common for a science during its period of data collection. Despite numerous international projects (through INQUA and IGCP) over the past 40 years problems, still arise when analysing data at regional to global scales. These require a common language, with rigid operational definitions, for classification, statistical analysis and hypothesis testing. Analyses of global scale data, perhaps the other extreme of analysis from local sea-level histories, can take a deductive, hypothesis-testing approach (though do not always do so). Yet they are ultimately dependent on reliable sea-level index points, many form local-scale studies of sea-level history. Experience from building and analysing the UK databank of sea-level index points provides a possible framework for a comparable initiative in North America. Application of the sea-level tendency methodology to data from Alaska and Bonaparte Gulf (Australia) illustrate the importance of considering spatial scale and formation processes. Sea level index points contain more information than coordinates on an age-elevation graph.