The Incorporation of Rare Earth Elements in Coral Lattice: Proxy for Rainfall and Climate

珊瑚晶格中稀土元素的结合：降雨和气候的代表

• 批准号: 9616645
• 负责人: Edward Sholkovitz
• 金额: $ 23.49万
• 依托单位: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 1997
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1997-04-01 至 1999-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9616645&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Incorporation; Rare; Earth; Elements; Coral

9616645 Sholkovitz One of the tasks facing geochemists interested in understanding how Earth's climate has changed over time is the discovery and development of tools (paleo-proxies) for deducing what past climates were like. Paleo-proxies are generally some sort of paleontological (for example, fossil forminifera) or geochemical measurement (for example, oxygen or carbon isotopic composition) that is assumed to relate to the climatic phenomenon of interest - temperature, salinity, oxygen, atmospheric carbon dioxide. The problem is that the proxies themselves are usually not the result of any one of these paleoclimatic conditions and thus lead to equivocal interpretations about ancient climatic conditions. In this project, the principal investigator will used archived modern coral samples collected from various regions for which there is also an extensive database of environmental observations such as temperature, salinity, runoff hydrology, and biology. Since rare earth elements (REE) are supplied to the ocean by weathering of rock exposures on the continents, he expects to see the REE signal from river runoff - reflecting rainfall conditions - preserved in the coral. If successful, he would be able to extend this study to much older corals form the geologic record and comparison with other currently-available paleoclimate proxies. The investigator anticipates that this would lead to the development of a new tool for studying paleoclimate. ***

对了解地球气候如何随时间变化感兴趣的地球化学家面临的任务之一是发现和发展工具（古代用物）来推断过去的气候是什么样的。古代用物通常是某种古生物学（例如，甲酸虫化石）或地球化学测量（例如，氧或碳同位素组成），它们被认为与感兴趣的气候现象有关——温度、盐度、氧气、大气二氧化碳。问题在于，代用物本身通常不是这些古气候条件中的任何一种的结果，因此导致对古代气候条件的模棱两可的解释。在这个项目中，首席研究员将使用从不同地区收集的存档的现代珊瑚样本，这些样本也有一个广泛的环境观测数据库，如温度、盐度、径流水文和生物学。由于稀土元素（REE）是通过大陆上暴露的岩石的风化作用提供给海洋的，他希望看到河流径流中的稀土元素信号——反映降雨条件——被保存在珊瑚中。如果成功，他将能够将这项研究扩展到更古老的珊瑚，形成地质记录，并与其他现有的古气候代用物进行比较。研究人员预计，这将导致研究古气候的新工具的发展。＊＊＊