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: 1324970
• 负责人: N. Gary Hemming
• 金额: $ 15.24万
• 依托单位: CUNY Queens College
• 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 2018-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1324970&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）后工业化增加的潜在环境，社会和经济后果是当今科学研究的最重要领域之一。这种增长是否会影响天气模式（即。更频繁或更严重的风暴，降水量的变化导致洪水或干旱），海平面上升（即，需要更好地了解气候变化（例如，格陵兰岛和南极冰川融化造成的沿海洪水）的影响，以便制定政策，避免或适应这些后果。了解地球如何对大气中二氧化碳浓度的这种变化做出反应的一个有用方法是回顾与我们今天经历的条件相似的时期。研究人员建议使用一种相对较新的工具来解决这个问题，即海洋碳酸盐的硼同位素组成，它已被证明可以反映海水的酸度。众所周知，大气中二氧化碳的增加会导致表层海水变得更加酸性。因此，硼同位素具有很大的潜力来研究地质历史中大气CO2的变化。他们提出了一个研究石炭纪-二叠纪间隔（3.6亿至2.6亿年前），一个类似于今天地球的时间，因为它代表了一个广泛的冰川时代，冰川-间冰期的变化类似于晚新生代，然后是显着的气候变暖。他们将从一套腕足动物的外壳中产生高分辨率的记录，这些外壳从密西西比纪早期的寒冷条件延伸到二叠纪早期的冰川和变暖的顶峰。这一提议不仅将解决深时气候变化问题，这将有助于为目前提供信息，它还将继续开发硼同位素作为深时pH值代理，为全球气候变化的多代理研究提供额外的工具，这将对广泛的气候科学家有价值。调查人员是皇后学院和斯托尼布鲁克大学的教授，这两所大学具有相当大的文化多样性，并制定了鼓励来自代表性不足群体的学生从事科学研究的计划。两位研究人员都指导了来自代表性不足群体的本科生和研究生，并将积极招募他们参加这个项目。他们为高中生开发了一个暑期项目，该项目采用嵌套系统，为研究生、博士后和地球科学教师指导学生研究提供宝贵的指导经验。关于海水化学主题的每周研讨会将为学生提供背景知识，以了解他们工作的相关性。这种方法导致了巨大的协同作用，自然会导致更好的科学交流，因为教师将这种经验带回课堂。