The study will allow the PI to continue his search for coral species A. palmata from Barbados to clarify various aspects of the sea level curve and associated paleoclimate records. The PI will drill and recover fossil corals that grew during the sea-level lowstand of the Last Glacial Maximum. He has identified a drowned reef complex that, based on its water depth would correspond to the lowstand, and thus represent reef growth during lowstand. Dating corals from this reef complex is the only way to ascertain this but if successful it will represent an exceptionally important dataset. Reef pinnacles on the complex may provide a record of sea level rise following the LGM lowstand up to ~90 m water depth, and thus fill in an important detail with respect to determining when the lowstand ended, whether it ended abruptly or not, and subsequent sea-level history up to the time of meltwater pulse 1A. The PI will use a wireline coring device deployed from the RV Knorr to collect cores of coral skeletal material. He will do initial U-series dating of collected coral material to determine the range of ages of the samples collected.
The broader impacts include an accurate reconstruction of sea-level during the true LGM and support of an undergraduate/graduate research training program.
