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IS-BILAT-Mobilitet Norge-USA /Canada

ICP-MS multielement ratios of foraminifera from the Southeast Pacific to reconstruct oceanographic conditions during last glacial maximum

Awarded: NOK 67,000

This application seeks support for a 5 month stay for Christine Euler (a PhD student) to achieve multielemental ratio analyses of planktonic foraminifera using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). These analyses will employ a new method ological approach allowing extremely small samples to be analyzed. This novel method, pioneered by Dr. Thomas Marchitto Jr. at UC Boulder, is not yet employed at UiB due to a lack of in house expertise. The results will constitute an essential component of Eulers PhD project and the knowledge and analytical skills acquired will allow the establishment of these techniques in house at UiB for future studies. This collaboration will utilize a sedimentary sequence from the Chilean margin (ODP Site 12 33) with extremely high sedimentation rates that is unique for its ability to portray decadal to centennial scale changes in climate and ocean properties through the last glacial cycle. The terrigenous fluxes which maintain the high sedimentation rates an d allow such temporal fidelity to be achieved at this location also dilute the foraminfera used for geochemical and isotopic analyses. Thus, many samples lack sufficient foraminifera for standard analytical techniques?preventing the full potential of thi s archive from being realized. The ICP-MS at UC is capable of precisely measuring numerous elemental ratios simultaneously down to extremely small sample sizes. The multielemental ratio analyses from this core will be used to investigate the environmental variability over a thousand year long period during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) at ~7yr resolution. In particular, the Mg/Ca records generated will allow the paleo-temperatures of both the surface and intermediate ocean to be reconstructed. These re sults will provide valuable new constraints for assessing the role of the Southern Hemisphere extratropical ocean and Antarctic Intermediate water in climate change on decadal to centennial timescales.

Funding scheme:

IS-BILAT-Mobilitet Norge-USA /Canada

Thematic Areas and Topics

No thematic area or topic related to the project