This award supports Dr. G. Robert Brakenridge of Dartmouth College to participate in a cooperative study of sedimentary geology with Professor Wolfgang Schirmer of the Geographical Institute of the University of Duesseldorf, Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). Their research plan makes use of field study sites within the U.S., a state-of-the-art laboratory facility in the FRG that is dedicated to the study of fluvial sediments, and the combined skills and knowledge of these two researchers in fluvial stratigraphy and fluvial sedimentary processes. Through preliminary joint field work, they have determined that the Holocene age sediments along the Upper Connecticut River contain a detailed record of recent sedimentary history that brackets the critical pre-historic to historic transition. During this period, the relatively pristine fluvial system began to be greatly affected by human activities. They now plan to 1) map and date Holocene terrace and floodplain sediments in the Upper Connecticut River Valley, 2) characterize the heavy metal concentrations within the fine-grained facies of these sediments (through close-interval vertical profile sampling and wet chemical analyses), and 3) estimate and compare volumes of historic and prehistoric sediment in floodplain storage. This will enable them to estimate the long-term (decades to centuries) sediment and, possibly, adsorbed pollutant mass budgets of this reach of the river. This effort to quantify long-term sedimentary dynamics has broad significance because it will help to define the pathways and linkages that govern the erosion, transportation and storage of sediments in watersheds. The results should provide insight into an important component of fluvial sediment budgets, the floodplain storage component. More specifically, the research is obviously relevant to other studies of floodplain and terrace landforms at locations further downstream along this major New England river, and to research focused on deltaic and estuarine sedimentation at the river's mouth. It should also be of interest to a wider group of investigators who are studying late Holocene and Historic fluvial sediments in other regions of the world.
