Table 1. Rates of sea level rise relative to 

 the land in the Northeastern United States. 



Long-term rates for the past 2000 to 3000 years estimated from age-depth curves 



^ 



for ^X-dated material in marshes and continental shelf sediments (Bloom and 

 Stuiver 1963; Redfield 1S67; Keene 1971; Oldale and O'Hara 1980; Rampino and 

 Sanders 1980) 



Short-term rates for the past 35 years (1940-75) from tide gauge records 

 (Hicks 1978) 



Eastport, ME 

 Portland, ME 

 Portsmouth, NH 

 Boston, MA 

 Woods Hole, MA 

 Newport, RI 

 New London, CT 

 New York, NY 



mm/yr 



3.5 

 2.0 

 1.8 

 1.5 

 2.9 

 2.5 

 2.6 

 3.1 



The published value of 0.01 m/100 yr is a typographical error in Oldale and 

 O'Hara 1980 (Charles O'Hara, personal communication). 



have been 16 mm/yr (Emergy and Uchupi 

 1972). 



At least two possible explana- 

 tions exist for this apparent discre- 

 pancy. The first is that marsh 

 development is possible during 

 times of more rapid sea level rise 

 than has been experienced, on the 

 average, during the past several 

 thousand years. The second is 

 that there have been times when sea 

 level rise was much slower than it 

 has been on the average, and that 



those periods were times of marsh 

 development. 



Analyses of tide gauge records 

 (Hicks 1978) have shown that the 

 relative rise of sea level along the 

 Northeastern United States during the 

 past 35 years has been two to three 

 times the recent long-term average 

 (Table 1). Studies of salt-marsh 

 accretion rates in this area have 

 shown that the marshes are capable 

 of "keeping up" with this rate of 

 rise (Table 2), and Redfield (1972) 



