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| GOM Climate and Environmental History |
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| Introduction |
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| This project provides records of climate and environmental changes that can be used to estimate impacts of potential future climate warming and provide a baseline for identifying any human related future changes. |
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Introduction
This project documents paleoceanographic, climatic and environmental changes in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) and adjacent land areas. The information is used to determine cycles of natural climate variability and environmental change primarily over the last 10,000 years. The project is also developing records of past, subsurface low-oxygen waters on the Texas and Louisiana shelf.
Information on natural climatic variability is needed to establish possible causes of climate variation on human timescales and help discriminate between natural variability and any human-related changes. Improved records of any past changes in oxygen content of bottom waters on the continental shelf of Louisiana and Texas are directly relevant to understanding the role of natural variability versus human activities in the periodic development of hypoxic conditions in the Gulf of Mexico. Ultimately better understanding of the frequency and magnitude of natural climate variability of the Holocene will lead to better forecasts of future change and its societal impact.
Above: Box core recovery of deep sea sediments from the northern Gulf of Mexico for reconstructing Late Holocene climate change and environmental conditions. Clockwise from bottom left: USGS geologists Jessica Spear and Chris Reich, Fitchburg State College undergraduate students Curt Heher and Matt Lanza, and University of South Carolina undergraduate student David Ratcliff. [larger version] |
continue to Project Objectives
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