Development and Testing of a Global Data Base of Planktonic Foraminifera for Estimating Past Environmental Variability

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This grant supports research to merge, reorganize, and expand several disparate planktonic foraminiferal abundance data sets (and their associated environmental data) that have been derived from core-top sediment and sediment trap samples from around the world. The long-term goals of the PIs are several fold: (1) to produce a global, taxonomically consistent set of foraminiferal assemblage samples (both the modern sediment and sediment-trap derived) that represent the full range of environmental and preservation conditions in the modern ocean: (2) to produce a data base of foraminiferal abundances, preservation states, and expand the related hydrographic data for both sediments and sediment traps; (3) to use the data base to evaluate existing and develop new methods of paleoenvironmental estimation; (4) to test the sensitivity for sediment-based environmental estimates to post-depositional alteration and seasonality of production; and (5) to evaluate the accuracy and precision of sediment-based SST estimates. The PIs will test the accuracy and precision of the environmental estimates in several ways: 1) through the evaluation of environmental estimates made on different subsets of the data; 2) through evaluation of different estimation techniques; and 3) through application of the sediment-derived environmental equations to sediment trap collection of foraminiferal assemblages. The foraminiferal collections will be created at Brown University (core-top samples) and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (sediment trap samples). The numerical data base will be made available to the paleoclimatology, paleoceanography and paleobiology research communities through the National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC). This research is important because it is science-driven data and information management directed at the production of a global paleoclimate climate base for global change studies.