University of Iowa Geologic History of South Florida

Geologic History of South Florida
Illustrations and objective data courtesy of AMOCO Production Co., Alan B. Shaw (Manager, South Florida Carbonate Project), and Brian F. Glenister (AMOCO Consultant).

Dr. Glenister sorting through the samples.

History of Project:

1) Dr.Glenister of the University of Iowa had a personal 40 year involvement in the project through lectures, lab work, and field trips. He worked with University of Iowa students, oil explorationists (especially AMOCO), and governments (U.S., Russia, etc.) to gather and analyze the data.

2) Each year petroleum explorationists gathered with 25 other participants for a week in Florida to work on the project.

3) This program was developed by AMOCO for the purposes of training explorationists and benefiting economically from the geological knowledge.

4) AMOCO invested 1.5 million dollars for 25 years of research, of which many included Dr. Glenister. The database and all the collections are now in the University of Iowa Repository.

Recent Sedimentation:

The Atlantic Coastal Ridge, which borders Florida Bay, is made of Late Pleistocene Miami Limestone that forms the highest se

The Key Largo and Miami Limestones are a part of the 105,000 year old Sangamon interglacial sea level where the sea stood 25 feet higher than it does now. Other high stands of sea level occurred at 130,000 and 80,000 years ago. For the last 70,000 years of the Late Pleistocene, sea level was at least 30 feet below its present level. Ice sheets from the last glacial stage began retreating roughly 17,000 years ago when sea level was 400 feet below its present level. The majority of shallow water carbonates found at depths of 50 feet or less were deposited during the last 8,000 years. The sea level in Florida was 12 feet below its present level 4,500 years ago, 6 feet below 4,000 years ago, and 1 foot below 1,000 years ago. It seems that sea level is still slowly rising.

Pictures from the Florida Bay Project