Partnership on Sea-Level change Along Brazilian Shores (SLABS)

Our proposed collaborative partnership between leading coastal and sea-level scientists from the University of York in the UK and the University of São Paulo, the Federal University of Paraná, and the Federal University of Pará in Brazil seeks to reconstruct how sea levels have changed along the Brazilian coast over the last 200 years. This period is highly significant as it covers the critical time during which the natural processes that had been driving sea-level change gave way to the dominance of human activities. While estimates of global sea-level change during this time have been made before, they almost exclusively rely on data from the Northern Hemisphere. We will contribute to addressing this bias by reconstructing sea levels using two approaches involving sediments deposited in coastal wetlands and organisms that live attached to rocky shorelines, approaches in which the team are world leaders. Our partnership will facilitate exchange of knowledge and technical skills between the partners, enabling us to compare and integrate our differing approaches to past sea-level reconstruction. The development of new sea-level records will allow us to begin to collaboratively address major scientific questions concerning the timing of the transition from natural to anthropogenically elevated rates of sea-level rise and the evolution of the different contributions to global sea level.