U.S.-Germany Cooperative Research: Paleoecologic Control of the Evolution of Marine Phytoplankton (coccoliths) in the Cretaceous Greenhouse World

9910025沃特金斯该奖项支持内布拉斯加大学的研究生、本科生大卫·沃特金斯与德国波鸿大学地质学系的约尔格·穆特洛泽合作。合作将侧重于白垩纪海洋浮游植物(球藻)对白垩纪(6500万至1.44亿年前)发生的重大气候变化的反应的几个方面。他们将审查短期(不到10万年)和长期(大于100万年)时间框架内的答复。在短期内，他们将研究钙质超微型浮游生物对选定地点和时间的轨道强迫气候变化的反应。在长期的时间框架内，他们将研究白垩纪中期温室间隔期间和之后的球石演化，以评估它们对全球变冷的反应。白垩纪时期的条件，以及其全球温室条件的间隔，可以作为我们今天产生的过量二氧化碳可能导致的变化的模型。

9910025WatkinsThis award supports David Watkins, a graduate student, and an undergraduate student from the University of Nebraska in a collaboration with Joerg Mutterlose of the Department of Geology at the University of Bochum, Germany. The collaboration will focus on several aspects of the response of Cretaceous marine phytoplankton (coccoliths) to the significant climatic changes that occurred in the Cretaceous period (65-144 million years ago). They will examine responses on both a short-term (less than 100,000 years) and long-term (greater than 1,000,000 years) time frame. For the short-term time frame, they will examine calcareous nannoplankton responses to orbitally-forced climatic shifts at selected places and times. For the long-term time frame, they will examine the evolution of coccoliths during and following the mid-Cretaceous greenhouse interval to assess their response to global cooling. The conditions of the Cretaceous period, with its interval of global greenhouse conditions, may serve as a model for the changes our present-day production of excess carbon dioxide might cause.