An understanding of the link between climate change and water quality of surficial hydrologic systems requires reliable quantifiable estimates of past changes in effective moisture (precipitation-evaporation) and hydrochemistry. The fossil record of lacustrine ostracodes (Crustacea) from closed basin lakes located in the northern Great Plains will be used to develop quantitative estimates of effective moisture and solute histories. The estimates will be obtained using a modern calibration data set of paired ostracode and environmental data, and by applying recently developed multivariate statistical techniques in order to obtain analogs of the fossil ostracode assemblages. The estimates obtained from this study will be compared to estimates of salinity and effective moisture developed from independent data sets derived from the same lake cores and based on diatoms and ostracode shell trace-elements and mineralogy. This Research Planning Grant is the first step in a larger research effort to develop a new method for obtaining paleoclimatic and paleohydrologic reconstructions for the northern Great Plains that can be used in GCM validation and for forecasting of climate- induced hydrologic changes.
