Collaborative Research: Living and Fossil Microorganisms, a Sensitive Paleoclimate Indicator in the McMurdo Dry Valleys; Implications for Plio-Pleistocene Climate and Ice Sheet

该奖项支持使用生物指标的研究，即信标砂岩和永久冻土中微生物的隐石微生物定植的化石记录，以重建麦克默多干谷上新世-更新世晚期的古气候历史。 这项工作将试图解决南极冰盖的稳定与动态的观点，使用过去和现在的职业分布的气候敏感的生活和生物指标在干旱山谷地区。 具体而言，将分析来自Beacon砂岩和永久冻土芯的土壤中是否存在活的和微生物群落，这些群落的生存区是已知的，或者将通过绘制目前的分布图来确定。 这一信息将与微生物活动造成的特征性剥落模式（现代和化石）的分布相结合，以重建相对年龄序列。 将对永久冻土岩芯的沉积学进行表征，并将其与微生物和年代地层学数据相结合。 将通过碳-14、热释光测年和宇宙成因放射性核素分析提供绝对年表（酌情）。

This award supports a study to use biological indicators, namely fossil records of cryptoendolithic microbial colonization of Beacon sandstone and microorganisms in permafrost, to reconstruct paleoclimate history of the Late Plio-Pleistocene period in the McMurdo Dry Valleys. The work will attempt to address the stabilist versus the dynamicist view of the Antarctic ice sheet using past and present occurences of distributions of climatically sensitive living and fossilized biological indicators in the Dry Valleys region. Specifically, soil derived from Beacon Sandstone and permafrost cores will be analyzed for the occurence of living and fossilized microbial groups whose viability zones are already known or will be determined by mapping the distribution of present occurences. This information will be integrated with the distribution of characteristic exfoliation patterns (recent and fossil) caused by microbial activity to reconstruct relative age sequences. The sedimentology of the permafrost cores will be characterized and integrated with microbiological and chronostratigraphic data. Absolute chronologies will be provided (where appropriate) by carbon-14, thermoluminesence dating and analysis of cosmogenic radionuclides.