Relative sea-level change and evidence for the Holocene Storegga Slide tsunami from a high-energy coastal environment: Cocklemill Burn, Fife, Scotland, UK

A site in the Cocklemill Burn valley on the north shore of the Firth of Forth, Scotland, provides evidence of relative sea-level changes during the Holocene from ca. 7970 to ca. 5090 radiocarbon years BP, and of the Holocene Storegga Slide tsunami dated here as having taken place after ca. 7215 radiocarbon years BP. Marine sediments associated with two shorelines widely present in mainland Scotland, the Main Postglacial Shoreline and the Blairdrummond Shoreline, are recorded. The Holocene Storegga Slide tsunami deposits are unique here in the record of such sediments in eastern Scotland, in that they occur within marine sands, of which the upper horizons are intertidal sandflat deposits. The tsunami deposits probably accumulated shortly after a period of accelerated relative sea-level rise, the pattern and timing of which could have played a role in triggering the Holocene Storegga Slide.