Collaborative Research: Using hiatus durations to quantify the tempo of Deccan volcanism

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The Deccan Traps of India is one of the largest volcanic provinces in the world, and its eruption occurred over a few million years across the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, when the non-avian dinosaurs and many other species went extinct. The potential role of Deccan volcanism in the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction is a subject of great scientific debate, and depends critically on the eruption rate leading up to the mass extinction. This project will provide constraints on the hiatus between eruptions. The hiatus will be estimated by a combination of cosmogenic exposure dating by applying 3He measurements and paleomagnetic secular variation. A better understanding of the eruption rates of Deccan Traps lavas will impact multiple disciplines, including volcanology, paleoclimatology, and paleontology. In addition, the proposed work will support two early-career women as PIs and build STEM talent through the education and training of two graduate students and two undergraduate students. A wide audience shall be engaged through a multi-year outreach initiative with the Cooperative Extension Service that builds on the successful DIG box program developed at the Burke Museum. This project will constrain the hiatus between eruptions of the Deccan Traps large igneous province in India. A novel combination of cosmogenic 3He and paleomagnetic observations will be utilized to provide 100-10,000 year resolution, which is currently inaccessible using direct chronometers. This resolution is crucial for assessing the Earth system response to Deccan volcanism in the lead up to the Cretaceous-Paleogene (KPg) mass extinction. Moreover, higher resolution records of hiatus durations are necessary to assess whether eruption pacing in the Deccan Traps changed over its lifespan, and in particular to test hypotheses for why a state shift in the composition, morphology, and eruptive volume of Deccan lavas occurs coincident with the KPg boundary. The successful demonstration of this combined approach in the Deccan Traps will provide a framework to quantify hiatus durations in other large igneous provinces and other types of volcanic provinces. The proposed work will support two early-career women who are new Principal Investigators and enhance STEM development through the education and training of two graduate students and two undergraduate students. A multi-year outreach initiative with the Cooperative Extension Service that builds on the successful DIG box program developed at the Burke Museum constitutes a strong outreach component to the study..This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.