Collaborative Research: Boron Isotopes Across the Carboniferous-Permian Glaciation: Assessing the Relationship of pCO2 to Seawater Chemistry

合作研究：石炭纪-二叠纪冰川时期的硼同位素：评估 pCO2 与海水化学的关系

• 批准号: 1324725
• 负责人: Emma Rasbury
• 金额: $ 21.8万
• 依托单位: SUNY at Stony Brook
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-08-15 至 2019-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1324725&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Boron; Isotopes; Across

The potential environmental, social, and economic consequences from the post-industrial increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) due to fossil fuel burning is one of the most important areas of scientific research today. Whether this increase will affect weather patterns (ie. more frequent or more severe storms, changes in precipitation resulting in floods or droughts), sea level rise (ie. coastal flooding due to melting of Greenland and Antarctic glaciers), needs to be better understood so that policies can be put in place to avoid or adapt to these consequences. A useful approach to understanding how the Earth responds to such changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration is to look back in time to periods when the conditions were similar to those we are experiencing today. Investigators propose using a relatively new tool to address this, the boron isotope composition of marine carbonates which have been shown to reflect the acidity of seawater. It is known that increasing atmospheric CO2 causes surface seawater to become more acidic. Thus, boron isotopes have great potential for examining changing atmospheric CO2 in the geologic past. They propose a study of the Carboniferous-Permian interval (360-260 million years ago), a time similar to today's Earth in that it represents a time of extensive glaciation, with glacial-interglacial variability analogous to the Late Cenozoic, that is then followed by significant climate warming. They will produce a high-resolution record from a suite of brachiopod shells that extend from the cold conditions of the early Mississippian to the culmination of the glaciations and warming in the early Permian.The potential for perturbing the Earth's climate system is of immediate global societal relevance. This proposal will not only address climate change questions in deep time, which will help to inform the present, it will also continue the development of boron isotopes as a pH proxy in deep time, providing additional tools for multi-proxy studies of global climate change that will be valuable to a wide range of climate scientists. The investigators are professors at Queens College and Stony Brook University, institutions with considerable cultural diversity and programs in place to encourage students from underrepresented groups to become engaged in scientific research. Both investigators have mentored undergraduate and graduate students from underrepresented groups, and will actively recruit them for this project. They have developed a summer program for high school students employing a nested system that provides valuable mentoring experience for graduate students, post-docs, and Earth Science teachers as they guide the student research. Weekly seminars on the topic of seawater chemistry will provide the students with the background to understand the relevance of their work. This approach leads to great synergy and naturally results in better communication of the science, as the teachers take this experience back to their classrooms.

由于化石燃料燃烧而导致的大气二氧化碳（CO2）的潜在环境，社会和经济后果是当今科学研究的最重要领域之一。这种增加是否会影响天气模式（即更频繁或更严重的暴风雨，降水的变化，导致洪水或干旱），海平面上升（即由于格陵兰岛和南极冰川的融化而造成的沿海洪水），需要更好地理解，以避免或适应这些后果。一种有用的方法来理解地球如何应对大气二氧化碳浓度的这种变化的反应是，将条件与我们今天所经历的条件相似的时期回顾一下。研究人员建议使用一种相对新的工具来解决这一问题，即已证明可以反映海水酸度的海洋碳酸盐的硼同位素组成。众所周知，增加大气二氧化碳会导致表面海水变得更酸。因此，硼同位素具有检查地质过去大气中不断变化的大气二氧化碳的巨大潜力。他们提出了一项针对石炭纪 - 珀米式间隔（360-2.6亿年前）的研究，这与当今的地球相似，因为它代表了一个广泛的冰川时代，具有类似于晚期捕获的冰川中的冰川间 - 间 - 冰川变异性，然后随后发生了重大的气候变暖。他们将从一组腕足动物贝壳中产生高分辨率的记录，这些甲壳部从密西西比州早期的寒冷条件延伸到冰川的高潮并在早期二叠纪的早期变暖。使地球气候系统扰动的潜力是直接的全球社会相关性。该提案不仅将在深层时间解决气候变化问题，这将有助于告知现在，还将继续发展硼同位素作为在深层时期的pH代理，为全球气候变化的多种研究提供了其他工具，这些工具对广泛的气候科学家来说是有价值的。研究人员是皇后学院和斯托尼·布鲁克大学的教授，具有相当大的文化多样性和计划的机构，以鼓励来自代表性不足的团体的学生参与科学研究。两位调查人员都指导了来自代表性不足的团体的本科生和研究生，并将积极招募他们参加该项目。他们开发了一项夏季计划，适用于采用嵌套系统的高中生，为研究生，培训后和地球科学老师指导学生研究时提供宝贵的指导经验。关于海水化学主题的每周一次研讨会将为学生提供了解其工作相关性的背景。这种方法会导致出色的协同作用，并且自然会导致科学的更好沟通，因为老师将这种经验带回了他们的教室。