The staircase structure of the Southern Brazilian Continental Shelf

TL;DR

This paper presents evidence that the Southeastern Brazilian Continental Shelf exhibits a devil's staircase structure, indicating organized pulsating sea level changes linked to fractal formation of scarps and terraces.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to analyze continental shelf structures, revealing their fractal and staircase characteristics related to sea level variations.

Findings

Shelf features follow fractal formation rules.

Sea level changes are organized and pulsating.

Method applicable to other global shelves.

Abstract

We show some evidences that the Southeastern Brazilian Continental Shelf (SBCS) has a devil's staircase structure, with a sequence of scarps and terraces with widths that obey fractal formation rules. Since the formation of these features are linked with the sea level variations, we say that the sea level changes in an organized pulsating way. Although the proposed approach was applied in a particular region of the Earth, it is suitable to be applied in an integrated way to other Shelves around the world, since the analyzes favor the revelation of the global sea level variations.