
Emma P. HockingNorthumbria University · Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences
Emma P. Hocking
BSc, MSc, PhD
About
63
Publications
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Introduction
My research interests focus on Holocene palaeoenvironmental and relative sea level change, in particular sea level change associated with great earthquakes and palaeoenvironmental change in polar regions.
Additional affiliations
August 2014 - present
November 2011 - August 2014
November 2009 - June 2011
Education
September 2006 - October 2010
September 2005 - August 2006
September 2002 - June 2005
Publications
Publications (63)
Evidence for the Storegga tsunami, which was generated by one of the world’s largest submarine slides, is well documented in Scotland, but the southerly extent of tsunami inundation in the UK is far more uncertain. Here, we combine new sedimentological, geochemical, microfossil, and ground-penetrating radar datasets to investigate the origins of tw...
Assessing the vulnerability of low-lying coral reef islands is a global concern due to predictions that climate and environmental change will increase reef island instability and cause reef island populations to be among the first environmental refugees. Reef islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans are highly dynamic environments that morphologica...
To provide insights into glacier-climate dynamics of the South Shetland Islands (SSI), NW Antarctic Peninsula, we present a new deglaciation and readvance model for the Bellingshausen Ice Cap (BIC) on Fildes Peninsula and for King George Island/Isla 25 de Mayo (KGI) ~62°S. Deglaciation on KGI began after c. 15 cal. ka BP and had progressed to withi...
The timing and impact of deglaciation and Holocene readvances on the terrestrial continental margins of the Antarctic Peninsula (AP) have been well-studied but are still debated. Potter Peninsula on King George Island (KGI) (Isla 25 de Mayo), South Shetland Islands (SSI), NW Antarctic Peninsula, has a detailed assemblage of glacial landforms and st...
The timing and impact of deglaciation and Holocene readvances on many ice-free terrestrial continental margins of the Antarctic Peninsula have been long-studied but remain debated. Potter Peninsula on King George Island (Isla 25 de Mayo), South Shetland Islands (SSI), NW Antarctic Peninsula has a detailed assemblage of glacial landforms, geomorphol...
The timing of mid–late Holocene deglaciation and glacier readvances on the South Shetland Islands, northern Antarctic Peninsula has been long debated. We used a combined geomorphological, chronological, and palaeolimnological approach to develop a new readvance model for the Bellingshausen Ice Cap (BIC) on the Fildes Peninsula, King George Island/I...
The island of Cyprus has a long history of human impacts, including the introduction of more than 250 plant species. One of these introduced species is Juglans regia (walnut), which is considered a naturalised non-native (introduced in last 500 years). Here we report the earliest occurrence of Juglans regia pollen grains from a sedimentary deposit...
In this paper, we describe palynological assemblages in the Middle Miocene (Serravallian) Kenslow Member of the Brassington Formation at Bees Nest Pit, near Brassington, Derbyshire, U.K., and infer vegetation types and their palaeoclimate implications. The limited lateral extent of the 1.33 m-thick succession of clay and lignite, and its position s...
The Middle Miocene was a warmer and wetter interval than present-day (Steinthorsdottir et al., 2021). In the UK, the most extensive Middle Miocene deposit is the Serravallian Kenslow Member of the Brassington Formation as exposed at Bees Nest Pit, near Brassington, Derbyshire, UK. While known to contain a diverse palynological and palaeobotanical r...
Bronze Age archaeological records from the eastern Mediterranean identify two periods of widespread so-called societal ‘collapse’ between ca. 4.50–ca. 4.20 cal ka BP and ca. 3.50–ca. 2.80 cal ka BP, respectively, which have been linked to a number of proposed causes, including climate change. However, the role of climate change in the ‘collapse’ of...
The role and climatic impact of the opening of the Drake Passage and how it affected both marine and terrestrial environments across the Eocene–Oligocene transition (EOT ∼34 Ma) period remains poorly understood. Here we present new terrestrial palynomorph data compared with recently compiled lipid biomarker (n-alkane) data from Ocean Drilling Progr...
Assessing tsunami hazards commonly relies on historical accounts of past inundations, but such chronicles may be biased by temporal gaps due to historical circumstances. As a possible example, the lack of reports of tsunami inundation from the 1737 south-central Chile earthquake has been attributed to either civil unrest or a small tsunami due to d...
Here we present two multiproxy records covering the last 5000 years from the Akrotiri Marsh in southern Cyprus. Pollen and diatom analysis of radiocarbon dated marsh sediments with an average chronological resolution of one date every thousand years, reveal expansion and contraction of the marsh in response to mid-late Holocene climate events, with...
The role and climatic impact of the opening of the Drake Passage and how it affected both marine and terrestrial environments across the Eocene-Oligocene Transition (EOT ~ 34 Ma) period remains poorly understood. Here we present new terrestrial palynomorph data compared with recently compiled lipid biomarker (n-alkane) data from Ocean Drilling Prog...
Significance
The Chavín, Moche, Tiwanaku, and Inka are well-known pre-Columbian cultures, but during the same time, in the southwestern Amazon, people were transforming a 100,000-km ² landscape over thousands of years. The extent of earthworks in the Llanos de Mojos has become clear since the 1960s, but dating these features has been difficult. We...
The pre-last glacial maximum (LGM) Antarctic landscape with inherited preglacial topography (Sugden and Jamieson, 2018) was significantly overprinted by multiple ice advances and retreats driven by Milankovitch’s orbital forcing parameters during the Cenozoic (Hambrey and McKelvey, 2000, Naish et al., 2009, Davies et al., 2012b). This long geomorph...
During the mid-Piacenzian, Nordic Seas sea surface temperatures (SSTs) were higher than today. While SSTs provide crucial climatic information, on their own they do not allow a reconstruction of potential underlying changes in water masses and currents. A new dinoflagellate cyst record for Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Site 642 is presented to evalu...
Changes in penguin populations on the Antarctic Peninsula have been linked to several environmental factors, but the potentially devastating impact of volcanic activity has not been considered. Here we use detailed biogeochemical analyses to track past penguin colony change over the last 8,500 years on Ardley Island, home to one of the Antarctic Pe...
Key datasets for Figure 3
Key datasets for Figure 5
Yanou Lake sediment record geochemical data
Modern-day Ardley Island penguin count data and statistical analysis
Supplementary Notes, Supplementary Discussion, Supplementary Methods, Supplementary Figures, Supplementary Tables and Supplementary References
Key datasets for Figures 4 and 5
New glass shard Electron Microprobe Analysis (EMPA) data for tephra deposits for this study and published comparison data
Ardley Lake sediment record geochemical data
Tidal marsh sediments from south-central Chile provide evidence for multiple great earthquakes. Diatom transfer functions, statistical models of the relationship between species preserved in the sediment and elevation, provide quantitative estimates of coseismic vertical land-level change associated with individual earthquakes. However, in south-ce...
Historical and instrumental records provide evidence for multiple great earthquakes and tsunami along the Chilean megathrust. However, as the written history of Chile only commenced with Spanish colonisation in the mid-16th century, these records are too short to adequately assess the recurrence of the greatest magnitude seismic hazards, and instea...
In this paper we adopt a quantitative biostratigraphic approach to establish a 1000-year-long coastal record of megathrust earthquake and tsunami occurrence in south central Chile. Our investigations focus on a site in the centre of the rupture segment of the largest instrumentally recorded earthquake, the AD 1960 magnitude 9.5 Chile earthquake. At...
Abstract A robust understanding of Antarctic Ice Sheet deglacial history since the Last Glacial Maximum is important in order to constrain ice sheet and glacial-isostatic adjustment models, and to explore the forcing mechanisms responsible for ice sheet retreat. Such understanding can be derived from a broad range of geological and glaciological da...
A robust understanding of Antarctic Ice Sheet deglacial history since the Last Glacial Maximum is important in order to constrain ice sheet and glacial-isostatic adjustment models, and to explore the forcing mechanisms responsible for ice sheet retreat. Such understanding can be derived from a broad range of geological and glaciological datasets an...
This paper compiles and reviews marine and terrestrial data constraining the dimensions and configuration of the Antarctic Peninsula Ice Sheet (APIS) from the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) through deglaciation to the present day. These data are used to reconstruct grounding-line retreat in 5 ka time-steps from 25 ka BP to present. Glacial landforms an...
Large to great earthquakes and related tsunamis generated on the Alaska megathrust produce major hazards for both the area of rupture and heavily populated coastlines around much of the Pacific Ocean. Recent modeling studies suggest that single-segment ruptures, as well as multi-segment, 1964-type ruptures, can produce great earthquakes, >M8, and s...
The 1960 Chile earthquake ruptured a 1000 km long segment of the interface between the Nazca and South American plates. Historical records describe three further south central Chilean earthquakes in 1837, 1737 and 1575; however the magnitude and slip distribution of these events is largely unknown.
Here we present the first results from recent pal...
The great earthquake, Mw 9.2, of AD 1964 may not be typical of other megathrust earthquakes in the region during the last 4000 years. We present new field data from three sites: Copper River Delta, the lower Katalla River valley and Puffy Slough, to enhance the temporal and spatial resolutions of the paleoseismic records of multiple great earthquak...
The 1960, and 2010 Chilean great earthquakes provide modern analogues for the sedimentary signatures of the largest megathrust events and their accompanying tsunamis. This paper presents lithological and diatom assemblage data from five sites and provides key insights for the development of longer earthquake chronologies, essential for assessing th...
This paper assesses variations in quantitative reconstructions of late Holocene relative sea‐level (RSL) change arising from using modern diatom datasets from different spatial scales, applied to case studies from Alaska. We investigate the implications of model choice in transfer functions using local‐, sub‐regional‐ and regional‐scale modern trai...
In the tectonically active area of south-central Alaska, sediment sequences from tidal marshes provide an archive of past great earthquakes during the last 4000 years. The use of diatom-based transfer function models is well established to provide quantitative reconstructions of relative sea-level (RSL) change associated with these earthquakes. How...
a b s t r a c t Precise relative sea level (RSL) data are important for inferring regional ice sheet histories, as well as helping to validate numerical models of ice sheet evolution and glacial isostatic adjustment. Here we develop a new RSL curve for Fildes Peninsula, South Shetland Islands (SSIs), a sub-Antarctic archipelago peripheral to the no...
Precise relative sea level (RSL) data are important for inferring regional ice sheet histories, as well as helping to validate numerical models of ice sheet evolution and glacial isostatic adjustment. Here we develop a new RSL curve for Fildes Peninsula, South Shetland Islands (SSIs), a sub-Antarctic archipelago peripheral to the northern Antarctic...
Previous investigations of multiple late Holocene earthquake events in Cook Inlet suggest different spatial patterns of co-seismic subsidence for the 1964, ~900 BP and ~1500 BP great earthquakes . One hypothesis to explain these differences is that they record variations in the location, extent or depth of the rupture zone. Testing this hypothesis...
On 27th February 2010, a Mw 8.8 earthquake struck central Chile. The main shock generated a moderate tsunami, reaching 2.34 m in Talcahuano and ripples were felt across the Pacific Ocean basin. The earthquake filled a seismic gap, the Concepción segment of the Chilean subduction zone, an area of the interface between the South American and Nazca pl...
Great earthquakes (Mw 8+) and related tsunami generated on subduction zones produce major hazards for both the area of rupture and heavily populated coastlines across much of the adjacent ocean. On 27th February 2010, a Mw 8.8 earthquake struck central Chile. Seventy three aftershocks exceeding Mw 5.0 occurred in the following 24 hours. The main sh...
In May 1960 south-central Chile was struck by the largest earthquake since the inception of modern seismic recording. The Mw 9.5 event unlocked almost 1000 km of the fault that conveys the Nazca plate beneath South America. The 27th February 2010 Mw 8.8 Maule earthquake ruptured a further 500 km long section immediately to the north. More than four...
We present new isobases constraining the Holocene isostatic uplift of the South Shetland Islands, northern Antarctic Peninsula, based on evidence from raised shorelines. Holocene shorelines were described and surveyed at fifteen sites to determine the spatial variability of relative sea level (RSL) change across the South Shetland Islands, and prov...
Reconstructions of former ice volumes of the Antarctic Peninsula and sub-Antarctic islands are frequently poorly constrained and only locally applicable. The use of precise relative sea level (RSL) data offers great potential for inferring regional ice sheet histories, as well as validating numerical models predicting future ice sheet evolution and...