Integrating sea level curve data in a bathymetric grid

Question

I am attempting to apply these data recording where sea-level was in the Gulf of Mexico (in meters below mean sea level) over the past 20,000 calendar years at a 500-year resolution in ArcMap:

What would be the best way to integrate this into a bathymetric raster so that the resulting map could be visualized with the various "shorelines" over time? Ideally, a .GRD file could be exported with an added column to the existing x, y, and z data, which may be tricky for visualization because it's the vertical shoreline progression is not always in a constant direction with time.

Answer 1

This is one approach that could be used:

1. Acquire numerical raster of present day sea level for your region of interest. see for example Gebco

2. Using map algebra create a new raster for each epoch by subtracting the SL correction value. E.g.:

   outRas = Raster("gebco") - (-119)

Gebco is an MSL-relevant terrain and depth model (depths are negative down). This will re-base all elevations (whether land or sea) to mean sea level at that epoch.

You could then symbolize each raster identically to show shoreline change.