Late Quaternary Paleoclimatic History of Southern Chile: Evidence from the Marine Record

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Southern South America provides a natural and almost continuous transition from polar to temperate climatic settings. The recovery of high resolution late Quaternary paleooceanographic and paleoclimatic records from the Chilean continental margin is thus an essential step in establishing the temporal and physical linkages between the oceanographic, atmospheric, and terrestrial systems of the southern hemisphere. This award addresses the late Quaternary marine record of marginal sediments of the Pacific rim of southern Chile. High resolution biostratigraphic, paleoecologic, paleooceanographic, and paleoclimatologic reconstructions will be accomplished through diatom, foramineral, and mineralogic analyses of modern and late Quaternary sediments. Comparing these results with paleoclimatic interpretations of terrestrial and ice core data will lead to a more comprehensive understanding of the ocean-atmosphere-continent response to climate change. The development of a high resolution late Quaternary climate record from southern Chile by this project is required for: (1) establishing the relationships in the timing and extent of late Quaternary glacial/climatic fluctuations between the Antarctic Peninsula and South America and (2) completing a regional framework of preliminary paleoclimatic studies, thereby leading to detailed future research on the neoglacial history of southern South America and the Antarctic Peninsula region.