This award will provide partial funding for the acquisition of instrumentation to study the paleomagnetism of ocean sediments and how it is acquired and preserved. The equipment will be operated and maintained in the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Analytical Facility at the University of California, San Diego. The University is committed to providing the remaining funds necessary. The equipment will be used to study under controlled laboratory conditions the formation, chemical transformation, biomolecular interaction and magnetization of green rust (a metastable ferroferric carbonate) and its eventual stable breakdown product, magnetite. Magnetite is one of the main contributors to the remanent magnetization of sedimentary rocks, and unraveling the causes of its formation and magnetization is one of the keys to understanding rock magnetism.
