Rising to the occasion: Sea level research at Tufts
By Kylie Liggett | March 26The Kemp Lab, located in the newly renovated Bacon Hall, focuses on coastal stratigraphy and the reconstruction of sea levels over the last 2,000 years. A core facet of the lab’s work is its interdisciplinary approach, which combines oceanography, seismology, statistics, geochemistry and climate science. The lab — led by Andrew Kemp, an associate professor of earth and climate sciences — is one of the leading university research labs studying sea level rise, with some of the most highly cited work in this field. Professor Kemp’s lab relies heavily on geological data to create these reconstructions. Specifically, sediment cores from coastal wetlands and salt marshes provide a significant portion of the data the lab uses. The lab also focuses on the Gulf Stream and on documenting the prehistory of large earthquakes, which can cause the land to shift vertically. Additionally, researchers study isostasy models, which describe the geological equilibrium between Earth’s crust and mantle.
