​Mr Stephen Chua wins AGU Outstanding Student Presentation Award for poster on historic sea-level and coastal change at the Kallang River Basin

Our warmest congratulations to Mr Stephen Chua, Ph.D. Student of Earth Observatory of Singapore, who has won Outstanding Student Presentation for a poster presented at the AGU annual meeting in December 2018. This prestigious award is only granted to the top 5% of student participants.

Mr Chua, who is in the final year of his PhD, is working with Assoc Prof Adam Switzer in the Coastal Lab.  His research involves looking at sediment records which can be used to infer past sea level change and coastal evolution of the Kallang River Basin as far back as 9500 years ago. Studying past nearshore dynamics gives us a better idea of how today’s coastline will respond to future sea level rise.

The topic of the winning presentation was a study where Mr Chua extracted a 38.5 m sediment core down to a depth of almost 50 m at Marina South. Dating of mangrove peat and marine muds produced the earliest records of sea level rise in Singapore since the last glacial maximum, revealing a dramatic rise in sea level of almost 17 m between 9500 and 7300 years ago. Geochemical and elemental analysis of sediments from this period produced the first coastal evolution model showing significant changes to Singapore’s southern coast within a short span of about 2000 years. These results provide a better understanding of coastal response to future sea level, hydrological and climatic changes, which threaten not just Singapore but also other cities built on floodplain and/or delta systems.

Read more about the Coastal Lab here