One of the important global changes of the Cenozoic took place during the late Tertiary (Neogene) when the climate of the present arctic region shifted from warm temperate to sub arctic. This award supports the study of two sedimentary sequences in southern Alaska that record the cooling trend near the Arctic Circle during the Miocene. These sediments represent almost continuous deposition from about 24 to 4 million years ago (Ma), and include a detailed record of the cooling from ca.16-5Ma. This project will integrate the results of pollen analyses and fossil leaf studies to reconstruct a detailed vegetation and climate chronology of the Miocene and early Pliocene for southern Alaska. The objective is to build a climate curve based on the ratio of warm-loving and cool-loving plants for each section. The detailed pollen and climate chronology can help establish a base-line datum of use in interpreting marine data for the Neogene of the North Pacific rim.
