Project Objectives
Project objectives include documentation of climate and environmental history from Gulf of Mexico area sediments and linking marine records with environmental changes on the adjacent continent.
Detailed Climate History Time Series: Studies concentrate on the last 10,000 years. Analysis are at submillennial to decadal resolution; annual resolution will be possible in some anoxic basins.
Drought/Flood Cycles: We are using quantitative analyses of planktic and benthic microfossils, pollen, stable isotope data, physical properties data, and geochemical data from high accumulation rate cores on the northern slope and shelf of the Gulf of Mexico as proxies for freshwater input to the Gulf of Mexico. The marine-derived records will be linked to the continental record of drought-flood cycles in the Mississippi Basin and southwestern United States.
Paleo-Hypoxia: The development of oxygen depleted bottom waters off the continental shelf of Louisiana and Texas has been identified as a human-related environmental problem but little work has been done to determine if the occurrence of hypoxia is related to natural processes and cycles. We have developed proxies to detect hypoxia in transects of Holocene sediments along the Louisiana and Texas continental shelf.
Summer Monsoon: Warmer climatic conditions due to natural variability or human related changes may increase the intensity and duration of the southwestern US summer monsoon. We are using analyses of microfossils and stable isotopes, as well as geochemcial records, as monsoon indicators in cores from the western and southern Gulf of Mexico. The records are being linked with studies in the southwestern US to develop a history of monsoon variations.
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