U.S. Japan Long-Term Research Visit: Pliocene Marine Paleoclimatology of the Western North Pacific Ocean

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This award will support a long-term research stay in Japan for Thomas M. Cronin, U.S. Geological Survey, to conduct collaborative research with Noriyuki Ikeya at the Institute of Geosciences, Shizuoka University, Japan. The objective of this project is to develop a quantitative method for the paleoclimatic study of Neogene and Quaternary marine deposits of Japan and the western North Pacific Ocean. Building upon a previous Cronin-Ikeya paleoclimatic study which applied a qualitative analysis of Ostracoda, a small, bivalved Crustacea which is easily fossilized, this project will utilize the extensive ostracode collection and water temperature data which are available at Shizuoka University. After a quantitative analysis of the ostracode samples at different water temperatures, the team will employ Dr. Cronin's methodology to develop a transfer function for the osctracodes and to derive equations for computing summer and winter paleotemperatures from Pliocene and Quaternary fossil ostracode assemblages from the western North Pacific. The research results will be applied to measure the climatic change during the middle Pliocene period.