The measurement of porosity and permeability in shallow-water carbonates is often complicated by the nature and degree of diagenesis, as well as the issue of scale-dependence in the measurement technique. Vertical profiles of hydraulic conductivity were calculated from short-interval straddle-packer injection tests in a three-well transect across the Pleistocene reefal limestone of the southern Dominican Republic (DR). Combined with whole-core porosity estimates and small-diameter (2.54 cm) plug estimates of matrix porosity and permeability, these data provide a means of assessing the scale-dependent petrophysical variability within a complex carbonate pore system, as well as the primary factors that control flow within such a system. Interval permeability values (converted from hydraulic conductivity) based on in situ injection tests ranged between 5 and 25 Darcy (D) (12.2 D geometric mean), up to three orders of magnitude higher than associated plug permeability values (0.08 D geometric mean). Although plug permeability is related to depositional environment (backreef, reef crest, forereef), injection tests did not show a relation to environment. Furthermore, interval permeabilities showed no relation to “matrix” (plug-based) porosity or permeability values. Interval injection permeability was correlated to “total” (whole-core) porosity and, even more so to larger scale “vuggy” (>~5 mm) porosity, quantified by subtracting the plug-based “matrix” porosity from the whole-core “total” porosity. The differences in permeability between plug and interval injection tests for these vuggy carbonates becomes greater over time, since cementation occludes matrix porosity and dissolution opens up larger molds and vugs, especially corals and other large aragonitic grains. The in situ interval permeability values measured in the DR reefal carbonates provide better values (than plug or core) of the impact of early meteoric diagenesis. These results confirm early development of vuggy intervals that can have permeability that is orders of magnitude greater than measured plug permeabilities. A touching-vug pore system shifts the scale dependence of hydraulic conductivity from the plug scale to the packer (bed) scale and probably toward the regional scale.

The most recent glacial-interglacial transition of the late Pleistocene ice age was accompanied by an increase in globally averaged ice-equivalent eustatic sea level of ∼120 m. This increase in sea level occurred over a period of ∼10,000 yr and was accompanied by highly significant regional inundations of the land by the sea as well as by significant regional emergence of the land from the sea in the initially ice-covered regions. These migrations of the coastline can be accurately predicted given only an assumed known history of the deglaciation of the continents. An especially interesting aspect of the suite of physical interactions involved in the global process of glacial isostatic adjustment concerns the influence of variations in the Earth's rotation on the local histories of relative sea level, which may be inferred on the basis of radiocarbon dating of suitable sea-level index points. The observed variability in sea level may be interpreted in terms of fundamentally important climatological and solid Earth geophysical properties of Earth System processes that govern system evolution.