This award supports a pilot study of deposits from the late Paleozoic Gondwanan ice age. These deposits represent the last time that the earth transitioned from an ice-house to greenhouse world. This project will generate new stratigraphic, sedimentologic, and geochemical data from ice-proximal deposits in Tasmania (Australia). The outcome will be a robust, chronostratigraphic framework of regional scale that can be incorporated into global views. If successful, this study will pave the way work on similar deposits in northern Victoria Land, Antarctica. The results from this work will contribute to models of past climates. In terms of broader impacts, society will benefit from insights gained on rates and magnitudes of climate variability during icehouse climate modes, including changes during the transition from icehouse to greenhouse climate states, which may apply to the current earth's own climate in the near future.
