Antarctique

Antarctic Offshore

Pzydz Bay

Let's start to take a look at the morphology of the sea floor, on which the valley and the northward progressive increasing water depth can be, partially, explained by the erosion induced by the recent movement of the icebergs after calving of the ice shelf or by isostatic rebound during deglaciation (the melting of ice) epoch. In sequential stratigraphic terms, it is interesting to see as the Plio-Pleistocene strata are controlled by the glacio-eustasy, i.e., by the eustatism induced by climatic changes, created by the glaciation/deglaciation cycles. In fact in glacio-eustasy, the adjustment of the lithosphere, in response to the loading and unloading induced by the addition and removal of the ice from the ice caps, has to be taken into account. Actually, the glacio-eustasy tries to explain the global variations in sea level, especially, during the Quaternary, as a consequence of the variation of the volume of the ice on the continents and oceans, and suggests that to a glacial period corresponds a marine regression and that to an inter-glacial period correspond to a marine ingression.