Mathematical Problems in Engineering
Volume 2009 (2009), Article ID 624861, 17 pages
doi:10.1155/2009/624861
Research Article
The Staircase Structure of the Southern Brazilian Continental Shelf
1Centro de Matemática da Universidade do Porto, Rua do Campo Alegre 687, 4169-007 Porto, Portugal
2Institute for Complex Systems and Mathematical Biology, King's College, University of Aberdeen, AB24 3UE Aberdeen, UK
3Escola de Artes Ciências e Humanidades, Universidade de São Paulo, Rua Arlindo Bettio 1000, 03828-000 São Paulo, SP, Brazil
Received 3 November 2008; Revised 22 January 2009; Accepted 12 February 2009
Academic Editor: José Roberto Castilho Piqueira
Copyright © 2009 M. S. Baptista and L. A. Conti. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
We show some evidences that the Southeastern Brazilian Continental Shelf (SBCS) has a devil's staircase structure, with a sequence of scarps and terraces with widths that obey fractal formation
rules. Since the formation of these features is linked with the sea-level variations, we say that the
sea level changes in an organized pulsating way. Although the proposed approach was applied in
a particular region of the Earth, it is suitable to be applied in an integrated way to other shelves
around the world, since the analyses favor the revelation of the global sea-level variations.