U.S.-Mexico Program: Holocene Ocean-Climate Variations, Gulf of California, Mexico

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0304933DouglasThis U.S.-Mexico award will support Dr. Robert Douglas and Dr. Donn Gorsline of the University of Southern California in a research collaboration with Dr. Jorge Ledesma-Vazquez of the Universidad Autonoma de Baja California in Ensenada, Mexico and Dr. Adolfo Molina-Cruz of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. The researchers intend to work on aspects of Holocene paleoceanography and paleoclimatology in the Gulf of California. Their collaboration seeks to document the ocean-climate variability in the Gulf during the Holocene and will contribute to assessing climate change in subtropical regions of the world. Specifically the researchers wish to understand the factors that have controlled and paced the variations in the Mexican monsoon over the past 9,000 years. They aim to test the idea that the major changes in the Gulf of California for the past 8,000 years (possibly earlier) are the result of an intensification of winter monsoon winds that produced an increase in biological productivity, shifts in the oxygen minimum zone (OMZ), and an increase in the evaporative production of the Gulf Water. For that purpose they propose to study the geochemistry of faunal and flora and sediment records from cores from the west and east side of the Gulf for signals indicative of water mass changes and of shifts in the position of the OMZ in the southern Gulf. The project will involve graduate students from both countries in the research. The Office of International Science and Engineering and the Division of Ocean Sciences of NSF are contributing funds for this collaboration.?????