Geological event

Last updated

A geological event is a temporary and spatially heterogeneous and dynamic (diachronous) happening in Earth history that contributes to the transformation of Earth system and the formation of geological strata. Event stratigraphy was first proposed as a system for the recognition, study and correlation of the effects of important physical or biological events on the broader stratigraphical record. [1]

Seismite in Holocene sediments of the Dead Sea basin, Israel. This is a record of an earthquake (a geological event) that disturbed the strata. Seismite Dead Sea sediments.jpg
Seismite in Holocene sediments of the Dead Sea basin, Israel. This is a record of an earthquake (a geological event) that disturbed the strata.

Geological events range in time span by orders of magnitude, from seconds to millions of years, and in spatial scale from local to regional and, ultimately, global. [2] In contrast to chronostratigraphic or geochronological units, that define the boundaries between periods, epochs and other units of the geologic time scale, complex dynamic diachronous changes are inherent to the event-stratigraphy paradigm. The lithostratigraphic or biostratigraphic boundaries that mark the onset and termination of geological events in the stratigraphic record may be diachronous, whereas those of formal chronostratigraphic or geochronologic units have basal boundaries that are isochronous.

Examples of geological events include a single footprint, an earthquake, a series of volcanic eruptions, the formation of mountains (orogenies), the Great Oxidation Event (GOE) of 2.4-2.0 billion years ago and the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE) ~500 Ma. The event paradigm is firmly embedded in Quaternary science, as the subdivision of quaternary time is based on the recognition of a succession of climatic events, principally glacial and interglacial cycles but also stadials and interstadials. Highly-resolved stratigraphic sequences, such as those from ice cores, provide evidence of much shorter-term millennial-scale climatic events that are superimposed on these broad glacial cycles. [3] [4] Other short-term happenings, such as Dansgaard–Oeschger events and Heinrich events, are evident in ice-core sequences and deep-ocean sediment records, respectively. [5] [6] Some scientists have proposed that the Anthropocene is more consistent with the concept of a geological event than with a formal chronostratigraphic/geochronological unit, such as an epoch of geologic time. [7] [8]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geologic time scale</span> System that relates geologic strata to time

The geologic time scale or geological time scale (GTS) is a representation of time based on the rock record of Earth. It is a system of chronological dating that uses chronostratigraphy and geochronology. It is used primarily by Earth scientists to describe the timing and relationships of events in geologic history. The time scale has been developed through the study of rock layers and the observation of their relationships and identifying features such as lithologies, paleomagnetic properties, and fossils. The definition of standardised international units of geologic time is the responsibility of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), a constituent body of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), whose primary objective is to precisely define global chronostratigraphic units of the International Chronostratigraphic Chart (ICC) that are used to define divisions of geologic time. The chronostratigraphic divisions are in turn used to define geochronologic units.

The Holocene is the current geological epoch, beginning approximately 11,700 years ago. It follows the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene together form the Quaternary period. The Holocene is an interglacial period within the ongoing glacial cycles of the Quaternary, and is equivalent to Marine Isotope Stage 1.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pleistocene</span> First epoch of the Quaternary Period

The Pleistocene is the geological epoch that lasted from c. 2.58 million to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in 2009 by the International Union of Geological Sciences, the cutoff of the Pleistocene and the preceding Pliocene was regarded as being 1.806 million years Before Present (BP). Publications from earlier years may use either definition of the period. The end of the Pleistocene corresponds with the end of the last glacial period and also with the end of the Paleolithic age used in archaeology. The name is a combination of Ancient Greek πλεῖστος (pleîstos), meaning "most", and καινός, meaning "new".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quaternary</span> Third and current period of the Cenozoic Era, from 2.58 million years ago to the present

The Quaternary is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). It follows the Neogene Period and spans from 2.58 million years ago to the present. As of 2023, the Quaternary Period is divided into two epochs: the Pleistocene and the Holocene ; a third epoch, the Anthropocene, has recently been proposed, but it is not officially recognised by the ICS.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dansgaard–Oeschger event</span> Rapid climate fluctuation in the last glacial period

Dansgaard–Oeschger events, named after palaeoclimatologists Willi Dansgaard and Hans Oeschger, are rapid climate fluctuations that occurred 25 times during the last glacial period. Some scientists say that the events occur quasi-periodically with a recurrence time being a multiple of 1,470 years, but this is debated. The comparable climate cyclicity during the Holocene is referred to as Bond events.

The International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), sometimes unofficially referred to as the "International Stratigraphic Commission", is a daughter or major subcommittee grade scientific daughter organization that concerns itself with stratigraphical, geological, and geochronological matters on a global scale.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timeline of glaciation</span> Chronology of the major ice ages of the Earth

There have been five or six major ice ages in the history of Earth over the past 3 billion years. The Late Cenozoic Ice Age began 34 million years ago, its latest phase being the Quaternary glaciation, in progress since 2.58 million years ago.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anglian stage</span> Period of the Pleistocene epoch

The Anglian Stage is the name used in the British Isles for a middle Pleistocene glaciation. It precedes the Hoxnian Stage and follows the Cromerian Stage in the British Isles. It correlates to Marine Isotope Stage 12, which started about 478,000 years ago and ended about 424,000 years ago.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Greenland ice core project</span> Project to drill through Greenland ice sheet

The Greenland Ice Core Project (GRIP) was a research project organized through the European Science Foundation (ESF). The project ran from 1989 to 1995, with drilling seasons from 1990 to 1992. In 1988, the project was accepted as an ESF-associated program, and the fieldwork was started in Greenland in the summer of 1989.

The Beestonian Stage is an early Pleistocene stage in the geological history of the British Isles. It is named after Beeston Cliffs near West Runton in Norfolk where deposits from this stage are preserved.

The Pre-Pastonian Stage or Baventian Stage, is the name for an early Pleistocene stage of geological history in the British Isles. It precedes the Pastonian Stage and follows the Bramertonian Stage. This stage ended 1.806 Ma at the end of Marine Isotope Stage 65. It is not currently known when this stage started. The Pre-Pastonian Stage is equivalent to the Tiglian C4c Stage of Europe and the Pre-Illinoian J glaciation of the early Pre-Illinoian Stage of North America.

The Gelasian is an age in the international geologic timescale or a stage in chronostratigraphy, being the earliest or lowest subdivision of the Quaternary Period/System and Pleistocene Epoch/Series. It spans the time between 2.58 Ma and 1.80 Ma. It follows the Piacenzian Stage and is followed by the Calabrian Stage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chibanian</span> Stage of the Pleistocene Epoch

The Chibanian, more widely known as Middle Pleistocene, is an age in the international geologic timescale or a stage in chronostratigraphy, being a division of the Pleistocene Epoch within the ongoing Quaternary Period. The Chibanian name was officially ratified in January 2020. It is currently estimated to span the time between 0.770 Ma and 0.129 Ma, also expressed as 770–126 ka. It includes the transition in palaeoanthropology from the Lower to the Middle Paleolithic over 300 ka.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oldest Dryas</span> Abrupt climatic cooling event during the last glacial retreat

The Oldest Dryas is a biostratigraphic subdivision layer corresponding to a relatively abrupt climatic cooling event, or stadial, which occurred during the last glacial retreat. The time period to which the layer corresponds is poorly defined and varies between regions, but it is generally dated as starting at 18.5–17 thousand years (ka) before present (BP) and ending 15–14 ka BP. As with the Younger and Older Dryas events, the stratigraphic layer is marked by abundance of the pollen and other remains of Dryas octopetala, an indicator species that colonizes arctic-alpine regions. The termination of the Oldest Dryas is marked by an abrupt oxygen isotope excursion, which has been observed at many sites in the Alps that correspond to this interval of time.

Chronostratigraphy is the branch of stratigraphy that studies the ages of rock strata in relation to time.

The Meghalayan age is the name given in 2018, by the International Commission on Stratigraphy, to the current age or latest geologic age – or uppermost stage of the Quaternary. It is also the upper, or latest, of three subdivisions of the Holocene epoch or series. This way of breaking down time is based only on geology; for example, it is unrelated to the three-age system of historical periods into which human development is sometimes divided.

In the geologic time scale, the Greenlandian is the earliest age or lowest stage of the Holocene Epoch or Series, part of the Quaternary. Beginning in 11,650 BP and ending with the 8.2-kiloyear event, it is the earliest of three sub-divisions of the Holocene. It was officially ratified by the International Commission on Stratigraphy in June 2018 with the later Northgrippian and Meghalayan Ages/Stages. The lower boundary of the Greenlandian Age is the GSSP sample from the North Greenland Ice Core Project in central Greenland. The Greenlandian GSSP has been correlated with the end of Younger Dryas and a "shift in deuterium excess values".

In the geologic time scale, the Northgrippian is the middle one of three ages or stages of the Holocene Epoch or Series. It was officially ratified by the International Commission on Stratigraphy in June 2018 along with the earlier Greenlandian and later Meghalayan ages/stages. The age takes its name from the North Greenland Ice Core Project (NorthGRIP). The age began 8,276 BP, near the 8.2-kiloyear event, and goes up to the start of the Meghalayan, which began 4,200 BP, near the 4.2-kiloyear event.

The Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) is an interdisciplinary research group dedicated to the study of the Anthropocene as a geological time unit. It was established in 2009 as part of the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS), a constituent body of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). As of 2021, the research group features 37 members, with the physical geographer Simon Turner as Secretary and the geologist Colin Neil Waters as chair of the group. The late Nobel Prize-winning Paul Crutzen, who popularized the word 'Anthropocene' in 2000, had also been a member of the group until he died on January 28, 2021. The main goal of the AWG is providing scientific evidence robust enough for the Anthropocene to be formally ratified by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) as an epoch within the Geologic time scale.

The preboreal oscillation (PBO) was a short cooling period within the preboreal stage of the Holocene epoch.

References

  1. ↑ Ager, D. V. (1973). The Nature of the Stratigraphic Record. Wiley.
  2. ↑ Rawson, P. (2002). Stratigraphical procedure. London: Geological Society. p. 57. ISBN   9781862390942.
  3. ↑ Rasmussen, Sune O.; Bigler, Matthias; Blockley, Simon P.; Blunier, Thomas; Buchardt, Susanne L.; Clausen, Henrik B.; Cvijanovic, Ivana; Dahl-Jensen, Dorthe; Johnsen, Sigfus J.; Fischer, Hubertus; Gkinis, Vasileios; Guillevic, Myriam; Hoek, Wim Z.; Lowe, J. John; Pedro, Joel B.; Popp, Trevor; Seierstad, Inger K.; Steffensen, Jørgen Peder; Svensson, Anders M.; Vallelonga, Paul; Vinther, Bo M.; Walker, Mike J. C.; Wheatley, Joe J.; Winstrup, Mai (December 2014). "A stratigraphic framework for abrupt climatic changes during the Last glacial interval based on three synchronized Greenland ice-core records: refining and extending the INTIMATE event stratigraphy". Quaternary Science Reviews. 106: 14–28. doi: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2014.09.007 . hdl: 2160/30436 . S2CID   55614771.
  4. ↑ Björck, Svante; Walker, Michael J. C.; Cwynar, Les C.; Johnsen, Sigfus; Knudsen, Karen-Luise; Lowe, J. John; Wohlfarth, Barbara (1998). "An event stratigraphy for the Last Termination in the North Atlantic region based on the Greenland ice-core record: a proposal by the INTIMATE group". Journal of Quaternary Science. 13 (4): 283–292. Bibcode:1998JQS....13..283B. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1099-1417(199807/08)13:4<283::AID-JQS386>3.0.CO;2-A.
  5. ↑ Dansgaard, W.; Johnsen, S. J.; Clausen, H. B.; Dahl-Jensen, D.; Gundestrup, N. S.; Hammer, C. U.; Hvidberg, C. S.; Steffensen, J. P.; Sveinbjörnsdottir, A. E.; Jouzel, J.; Bond, G. (July 1993). "Evidence for general instability of past climate from a 250-kyr ice-core record" (PDF). Nature. 364 (6434): 218–220. Bibcode:1993Natur.364..218D. doi:10.1038/364218a0. S2CID   4304321.
  6. ↑ Hemming, Sidney R. (March 2004). "Heinrich events: Massive late Pleistocene detritus layers of the North Atlantic and their global climate imprint: HEINRICH EVENTS". Reviews of Geophysics. 42 (1). CiteSeerX   10.1.1.453.8967 . doi: 10.1029/2003RG000128 . S2CID   53526029.
  7. ↑ Bauer, Andrew M.; Edgeworth, Matthew; Edwards, Lucy E.; Ellis, Erle C.; Gibbard, Philip; Merritts, Dorothy J. (16 September 2021). "Anthropocene: event or epoch?". Nature. 597 (7876): 332. Bibcode:2021Natur.597..332B. doi:10.1038/d41586-021-02448-z. ISSN   0028-0836. PMID   34522014. S2CID   237515330.
  8. ↑ Gibbard, Philip L.; Bauer, Andrew M.; Edgeworth, Matthew; Ruddiman, William F.; Gill, Jacquelyn L.; Merritts, Dorothy J.; Finney, Stanley C.; Edwards, Lucy E.; Walker, Michael J. C.; Maslin, Mark; Ellis, Erle C. (15 November 2021). "A practical solution: the Anthropocene is a geological event, not a formal epoch". Episodes. 45 (4): 349–357. doi: 10.18814/epiiugs/2021/021029 . S2CID   244165877.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.