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2019 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

19. Estuaries of the Basque Coast

Authors : Manu Monge-Ganuzas, Alejandro Cearreta, María Jesús Irabién, Ane García-Artola

Published in: The Spanish Coastal Systems

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

The Basque estuaries represent drowned river valleys that were firstly flooded by the sea due to a climate-change-induced sea-level rise 8500 yr ago, and subsequently, infilled with a general shallowing sequence. Basque estuaries developed from an initial fluvial environment followed by a firstly marine and secondly brackish depositional system.

During more than 25 years, different boreholes and cores have been drilled and studied along the Basque estuaries by the Harea-Coastal Geology research group of the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU. In fact, the study of the microfossil content of the Basque estuaries, together with other sedimentological, geochemical or archaeological approaches, has become the main source of geological information in order to reconstruct their Holocene and Anthropocene development and the main drivers behind their environmental evolution. However, much additional knowledge about these variable coastal environments should be gathered in the next years and decades using a multidisciplinary geological approach.

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Title: Estuaries of the Basque Coast
Authors: Manu Monge-Ganuzas
Alejandro Cearreta
María Jesús Irabién
Ane García-Artola
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: The Spanish Coastal Systems
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-93168-5

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-93169-2

Copyright Year: 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93169-2_19