Rising sea level and former coastlines in North Frisia - SEAFRONT SP4 of FOR 5837 (TORF)

• Applicant: Dr. Friederike Bungenstock
• Subject Area: Physical Geography ; Prehistory and World Archaeology
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 541064351

Detailed information on local and regional sea-level changes in the past is crucial for understanding the evolution of the landscape and, in particular for the last millennia, for understanding its interrelationship with human settlement, as well as early coastal management structures. This is especially the case in shallow coastal areas, which are particularly sensitive to changes in relative sea-level (RSL), such as the Wadden Sea area and the adjacent clay district. Previous RSL reconstructions along the southern North Sea coast are mainly based on the ‘classic peat’ approach, which has resulted in a data gap for the last 3000 years due to the absence of peat. For this timespan, data is based on upper or lower limiting data and data with high uncertainties. The use of microfauna-based transfer functions represents a powerful tool for addressing this data gap. The application of these transfer functions to Holocene sediment archives results in RSL reconstructions with a decimetre-scale precision. Since its initial application in the British Isles, North America and Denmark, the quality and efficacy of this methodology has been successfully extended and improved by the applicants. This was achieved by combining foraminifers and ostracods for the establishment of a transfer function in the area of the East Frisian Islands. The proposed project will further develop this approach, with a particular focus on the TORF area in North Frisia and the medieval period, and extend the dataset for the Sylt-Rømø Basin and East Frisia. The newly derived sea-level data will be integrated into the forthcoming glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) model for the North Sea sector (NKG2022GIA model) in order to quantify the predicted offsets, particularly for the last 1000 to 3000 years along the German North Sea coast. Finally, the gained RSL data will support and improve the palaeo-landscape reconstructions in the study area of the overarching project FOR 5837 (TORF).

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 5837: Times of Rise and Failure (TORF) - Integrative research on the cultural landscape development in the North Frisian Wadden Sea region during the common era
• International Connection: Sweden
• Cooperation Partner: Dr. Holger Steffen