Impact of Rising Sea Levels on Native American Cultural Sites in Southern California

Summary

Humans arrived in Southern California about 13,000 years ago, shortly after sea level began rising following the last glaciation. Most of their sites along the shoreline of the time have been inundated and are unknown. Now hundreds of remaining sites on-shore are threatened, or will be threatened, in the foreseeable future by rising sea levels. A survey of prehistoric and historic human site elevations in Southern California reveals the 1.4 m rise in sea level expected in 2100 due only to the thermal expansion of sea water will impact 194 sites. If the ice on either Greenland or West Antarctica were to collapse or melt into the ocean, sea level would rise some 8 m and impact an additional 295 sites or 17 m and 434 sites if both collapse. While each of these scenarios have different time estimates, the collapse of parts of the Greenland and West Antarctica ice sheets could happen soon and quickly, adding their sea level components to the estimates for thermal expansion (=18.5 m). Protection of human archaeological and historic sites in coastal Southern California should be coordinated and included with efforts to reduce damage to modern infrastructure and buildings from sea level rise.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• California Archaeology and Climate Change

Keywords

Spatial Coverage