RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Nonlinear landscape and cultural response to sea-level rise
JF Science Advances
JO Sci Adv
FD American Association for the Advancement of Science
SP eabb6376
DO 10.1126/sciadv.abb6376
VO 6
IS 45
A1 Barnett, Robert L.
A1 Charman, Dan J.
A1 Johns, Charles
A1 Ward, Sophie L.
A1 Bevan, Andrew
A1 Bradley, Sarah L.
A1 Camidge, Kevin
A1 Fyfe, Ralph M.
A1 Gehrels, W. Roland
A1 Gehrels, Maria J.
A1 Hatton, Jackie
A1 Khan, Nicole S.
A1 Marshall, Peter
A1 Maezumi, S. Yoshi
A1 Mills, Steve
A1 Mulville, Jacqui
A1 Perez, Marta
A1 Roberts, Helen M.
A1 Scourse, James D.
A1 Shepherd, Francis
A1 Stevens, Todd
YR 2020
UL http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/45/eabb6376.abstract
AB Rising sea levels have been associated with human migration and behavioral shifts throughout prehistory, often with an emphasis on landscape submergence and consequent societal collapse. However, the assumption that future sea-level rise will drive similar adaptive responses is overly simplistic. While the change from land to sea represents a dramatic and permanent shift for preexisting human populations, the process of change is driven by a complex set of physical and cultural processes with long transitional phases of landscape and socioeconomic change. Here, we use reconstructions of prehistoric sea-level rise, paleogeographies, terrestrial landscape change, and human population dynamics to show how the gradual inundation of an island archipelago resulted in decidedly nonlinear landscape and cultural responses to rising sea levels. Interpretation of past and future responses to sea-level change requires a better understanding of local physical and societal contexts to assess plausible human response patterns in the future.