EAGER: Deglacial Chronology of Bermuda Rise

该奖项使用的资金，在早期概念赠款探索性研究（EAGER）计划的主持下，用于一个项目，旨在研究来自百慕大海隆东北部2万年前深水沉积物的放射性碳年代令人困惑的不一致性的原因和意义。百慕大海隆东北部是研究末次冰期气候的经典地点，因为它的沉积速率高，有孔虫保存良好。由于它也包含了最深的气候变化记录之一，百慕大海隆核心已经研究了30多年，它已成为气候历史的标准参考部分。因此，如果年龄测定的不一致是系统性的，而不仅仅是局部的，那么正确的放射性碳测年对于校准该地区的时间至关重要，也许在其他地方也是如此。EAGER计划的探索性质，因为假设该项目的结果将表明海底沉积物可以“未混合”通过测定每个样本的年代如果这一假设被拒绝，由此产生的年表将仍然是对目前情况的改进，其中重要的结果正在等待改进的年龄模型才能发表。然而，如果这一假设被接受，新的年表可能会激发对这个和北大西洋西部其他地点的新研究。该项目所针对的百慕大海隆岩心将是未来研究人员的宝贵资源，因为这些岩心将具有内部一致的地层和年代学，未来海洋和气候变化的代用指标将在一个共同的时间和沉积框架中联系起来。

This award uses funds, under the auspices of the EArly-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) program, for a project aimed at examining the causes and significance of perplexing inconsistencies in radiocarbon dates coming from 20,000 year old deep water sediments at the northeast Bermuda Rise.The deep, northeast Bermuda Rise is a classical location for study of climate over the last glacial cycle because of its high deposition rates and good preservation of foraminifera. Since it is also contains one of the deepest records of climate change and Bermuda Rise cores have been studied for over 30 years, it has become a standard reference section for climate history. Hence, getting the radiocarbon dating right is critical to calibrating time in this region and, perhaps, elsewhere if the inconsistencies in age dating are systemic and not simply local.The research activities fit well into the potentially transformative, high risk, and exploratory nature of the EAGER programs because it is hypothesized that results from this project will show that sediments on the seafloor can be "unmixed" by dating every sample. If this hypothesis is rejected, the resulting chronology will nevertheless be an improvement on the present situation, where important results are waiting for an improved age model before they can be published. If the hypothesis is accepted, however, the new chronology could inspire new research on this and other locations in the western North Atlantic. The cores from the Bermuda Rise targeted for this project would be a valuable resource for future researchers as they will have internally consistent stratigraphies and chronologies and future proxies for ocean and climate change will be linked in a common temporal and sedimentological framework.