Torbjorn Tornqvist, Michael Blum

While major technological advances have made measurements of coastal subsidence more sophisticated, these advances have not always been matched by a thorough examination of what is actually being measured. Here we draw attention to the widespread miscommunication about key concepts in the coastal subsidence literature, much of which revolving around the interplay between sediment accretion, vertical land motion, and surface-elevation change. We attempt to rectify this by drawing on well-established concepts from the tectonic geomorphology community. A consensus on these issues by means of a common language can help bridge the gap between disparate disciplines (ranging from geophysics to ecology) that are critical in the quest for meaningful projections of future relative sea-level rise.