Collaborative Research: Past and Modern Variability of Summer and Winter Rainfall on the Pacific Slope of the Central Andes (Chile)

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This project seeks to use fossil wetland deposits and fossil rodent middens from the Atacama Dessert in the Central Andes as a means to estimate precipitation and seasonality for the region as a aid to reconstructing Quaternary climate. The fossil data and paleoclimatic reconstructions will be guided, in part, by consideration of the modalities of the modern climate.The goal of the research is to use the fossil data to understand the steep transition between two seasonal rainfall regimes linked to the South American Summer Monsoon and the southern westerlies. The chosen research sites underlie this transition zone and are along a 300-km stretch of Atacama Desert highlands and the southern edge of the Altiplano.Broadly speaking, the research will support international scientific collaboration and undergraduate student training. It has the potential to link important paleoclimate proxy records with modern climatology in order to interpret past climate processes in a region with little existing paleoclimate data.