This Small Grant for Exploratory Research supports the use of advanced geochemical techniques to obtain paleoceanographic information from sediments from the Palmer Deep, a glacially overdeepened basin on the Antarctic Peninsula shelf, ~20 km southwest of Anvers Island. The projects goals are to determine characteristics of the Southern Ocean in the Holocene and understand its link to global climate change and recent Antarctic glaciations. These sediments lack materials typically used for such studies, and the PIs will use novel approaches that include sediment dating using radioisotope methods for 14C and U/Th; determination of ocean bottom redox states using various trace metals; and estimations of sea surface temperature using TEX86, a sedimentary lipid method.
The broader impacts of this work include support of postdoctoral and undergraduate student research and improving societys understanding of global climate change.
