Drone-based acquISition and modelling of morpho-stratigraphic data alonG the TErra Nova Bay (Victoria Land, AntarctIca) coastline

The study of global changes in Antarctica can be approached in several ways at very different time scales, from millennia to hundreds of thousands of years. While the study of ice cores, in which air from the more or less distant past remains trapped, gives us very important information about the composition of the atmosphere and paleotemperatures, it does not exhaust the problem of the response of complex systems to the change in one or more variables that control by far the most important aspect, the balance between melting and pluristagional accumulation of land ice in a key area such as the Antarctic continent. Leveraging innovative technologies, the DISGELI project aims to collect morpho-bathymetric, morpho-topographic, and stratigraphic data along the coasts of Terra Nova Bay (Victoria Land, Antarctica) for much of the ice-free summer season, with the main purposes of: (i) reconstruct the temporal steps of the landline retreat along sea valleys and local glaciers after the last glacial maximum (LGM); (ii) chronologically constrain the deglaciation processes along the coast; and (iii) reconstruct the relative sea-level changes during the Holocene with better detail than what has been obtained so far. The morphobathymetric and stratigraphic data will be complemented by digital terrain models derived from new surveys in key onshore areas where coastal paleo-lines and associated sea-level stationing markers have been recognized and dated.