Late Holocene differential subsidence and relative sea level rise in the Tabasco Delta, Mexico

Abstract

Coastal subsidence owing to compaction of Holocene strata and deeper-rooted components affects large delta plains such as the Tabasco delta in southern Mexico (Gulf coast). For this system, GNSS3-PPP ground-truthed LiDAR imagery of high-resolution dated beach-ridge series reveals considerable differential subsidence on either side of the present Usumacinta-Grijalva River mouth. Collected field-data allows for quantification of differential subsidence over several time windows and reconstruction of relative sea-level rise back to 5000 years ago. Observed differential subsidence of 1–1.5 m is regarded to be syn-sedimentary delta-subsurface compaction of buried strata in response to the accumulating overburden of the prograding beach-ridge complex.