A new Approach at Long Distance, High Resolution Magnetic Stratigraphy Applicable to Both Marine and Terrestrial Records

The paleomagnetic record of geomagnetic change has a long history as a supreme stratigraphic tool for marine and terrestrial sediments. The development of paleointensity represents one of the latest and greatest advances in magnetic stratigraphy, providing suborbital correlation at a global scale. Millennial and even centennial scale correlation can be provided through past directional changes known as paleomagnetic secular variation (PSV), though such correlations have remained limited to small regions. Recent improvements in our understanding of geomagnetic change is allowing the development of a processed based PSV stratigraphy, that in contrast to a simple wiggle matching, offers high resolution correlation over a much larger spatial scale. So far tested from Europe to Alaska, this approach results in improved age accuracy, resolution, and new stratigraphic opportunities. As with all magnetic stratigraphies, the primary limitation results from the difficulty in extracting demonstrably accurate geomagnetic information from any paleomagnetic record. Additional uncertainties, even in well-constrained high quality records, reflect our often-poor understanding of the difference between the age of the magnetization relative to the age of the sediment.