This ESH project will examine fine-grained laminae derived from floods in sediment cores from the Santa Barbara Basin, as a tracer of extreme precipitation periods during the last 5000 years. Sediment analysis including X-radiography, particle size distribution and clay mineralogy will be used to distinguish flood deposits from distal turbidites. Radiocarbon dating willbe used to produce a chronolgy of the flood events, and the resulting record will be compared with other regional climate records, such as tree-ring indices, to interpret the long-term record of climate change in southern California at annual, decadal, and century-scale resolution.
