Late Holocene Climate History Recorded in Laminated Sediments from the George V. Coast, Antarctica

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This Research Opportunity for Women (ROW) award is a study of laminated sediments from the antarctic continental shelf in order to reconstruct the Holocene (the most recent 2500 years) climatic record. Existing sediment cores from the George V. Basin, a deep inner continental shelf basin located off the Wilkes Land Coast, will be sampled in this effort. These are ideal for high resolution study because of the detail preserved in the undisturbed and unmixed laminated sections, and because of the relatively high (approximately three millimeters per year) sedimentation rates. It is hypothesized that the laminated segments originated because extensive primary productivity in a necessarily ice-free ocean environment resulted in high carbon fluxes to the sea floor and the development of anoxic conditions below the sediment-water interface. Alternating intervals of non-laminated (mixed, and probably bio-turbated) sediments record deposition under a more extensive or persistent sea ice cover. The measurements obtained from the cores will be used to model the history of basin deposition in the time interval since the retreat of the antarctic ice sheet form the continental shelf to its present position. Radiocarbon dates will allow the correlation of the sediment cores to other high resolution proxy climate data (e.g. from ice cores), and will serve as a link between the marine and terrestrial climate records. Ultimately it is expected that these results can be used to predict where similar high resolution proxy records may be found in other antarctic marginal basins, so that the analysis may be extended to assess the effects of geologically recent climatic change on oceanographic and depositional conditions in the Southern Ocean.