Sea level : a history /

Sea level : a history /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	Hardenberg, Wilko Graf von, author.
Imprint:	Chicago, IL ; London : The University of Chicago, 2024. ©2024
Description:	x, 199 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
Language:	English
Series:	Oceans in depth Oceans in depth.
Subject:	Sea level -- History. Sea level -- Measurement -- History.
Format:	Print Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/13579765

Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:	9780226831831 0226831833 9780226834597
Provenance:	Binding: Includes dust-jacket.
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary:	"What do we mean when we talk about sea level? How and why did people begin to measure it? With Wilko Graf von Hardenberg as our guide, we follow these questions and more to the muddy littoral spaces of Venice and Amsterdam, the coasts of the Baltic Sea, the Panama and Suez canals, and through the expansion of European colonial empires and the science funding boom of the Cold War. This book is the first history of sea level as a concept and of its theoretical and practical uses. It breaks new ground by offering an innovative outlook on how human societies worldwide have revisited and reinterpreted the relationship between land and sea in modern times. What is more, as a conceptual history of one of the most widely used baselines of environmental change, Sea Level provides a much-needed historical contextualization of anthropogenic sea level rise and its impact on the global coast. By narrating how sea level has morphed from a stable geodetic baseline to a marker of anthropogenic change, von Hardenberg sheds new light on the Anthropocene itself"--

Description
Summary:	Traces a commonplace average--sea level--from its origins in charting land to its emergence as a symbol of global warming. <br> <br> <br> <br> News reports warn of rising sea levels spurred by climate change. Waters inch ever higher, disrupting delicate ecosystems and threatening island and coastal communities. The baseline for these measurements--sea level--may seem unremarkable, a long-familiar zero point for altitude. But as Wilko Graf von Hardenberg reveals, the history of defining and measuring sea level is intertwined with national ambitions, commercial concerns, and shifting relationships between people and the ocean.<br> <br> <br> <br> Sea Level provides a detailed and innovative account of how mean sea level was first defined, how it became the prime reference point for surveying and cartography, and how it emerged as a powerful mark of humanity's impact on the earth. With Hardenberg as our guide, we traverse the muddy spaces of Venice and Amsterdam, the coasts of the Baltic Sea, the Panama and Suez canals, and the Himalayan foothills. Born out of Enlightenment studies of physics and quantification, sea level became key to state-sponsored public works, colonial expansion, Cold War development of satellite technologies, and recognizing the climate crisis. Mean sea level, Hardenberg reveals, is not a natural occurrence--it has always been contingent, the product of people, places, politics, and evolving technologies. As global warming transforms the globe, Hardenberg reminds us that a holistic understanding of the ocean and its changes requires a multiplicity of reference points.<br> <br> <br> <br> A fascinating story that revises our assumptions about land and ocean alike, Sea Level calls for a more nuanced understanding of this baseline, one that allows for new methods and interpretations as we navigate an era of unstable seas.
Physical Description:	x, 199 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
Bibliography:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:	9780226831831 0226831833 9780226834597