CAREER: To see a world in a grain of sand: Novel applications of sand grains as records of ancient surface environments

沉积岩保存了古代生态系统和环境如何对气候变化做出反应的记录，其整合时间比人类寿命长得多。这些信息为现代生态系统如何受到气候变化的影响提供了有用的视角。该项目将开发一套新的工具，根据一种独特类型的沙粒的特征来估计地球古代大气中存在的二氧化碳含量，这将提高我们对地球过去气候状态的理解。这项研究工作将与一个教育项目相结合，该项目将开发新的以探究为基础的教材和课程，以改善科罗拉多K-12学生的地球科学教育，同时也为当地教师和本科生提供专业发展机会。这项工作将建立在PI的新方法，用于重建古沃茨的碳酸盐矿物饱和状态，以解决主要的研究目标：建立和共享一个工具包，用于应用卵大小测量，以重建古沃茨和古pCO 2的碳酸盐化学，这将是广泛有用的科学界。这一目标将通过以下方式实现：（1）创建用于测量和解释卵粒大小数据的标准化和可重复的工作流程，以及（2）通过收集来自美国西部新生代碳酸盐生成湖泊的大量卵粒大小数据来测试和改进卵粒大小作为pCO 2约束的应用，从而扩展该代理的实用性。该项目的教育和推广部分将设计、测试和共享一个教育平台，该平台包括一个虚拟和实体的“沙子图书馆”，并配有基于探究的课程，通过阐明沙粒特征与地球表面过程之间的联系，改善各级教育的地球科学教育。Sand Library的开发将与当地的Title I STEM磁铁学校合作，并将在课堂上与学生互动，为学校教师提供专业发展，并为课堂外的STEM丰富提供机会。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Sedimentary rocks preserve a record of how ancient ecosystems and environments responded to changes in climate, integrating over durations much longer than human lifetimes. This information provides a useful perspective on how modern ecosystems might be affected by climate change. This project will develop a new set of tools to estimate the amount of CO2 that was present in Earth’s ancient atmosphere based on the characteristics of a unique type of sand grain, which will improve our understanding of Earth’s past climate states. This research effort will be integrated with an educational project that will develop new inquiry-based teaching materials and curriculum to improve the Earth science education for K-12 students in Colorado, while also providing professional development opportunities to local schoolteachers and undergraduate students.This project seeks to expand the scope of paleoenvironmental information sedimentologists can glean from the rock record. This work will build upon the PI’s novel approach for reconstructing the carbonate mineral saturation state of ancient waters to address the primary research objective: to build and share a toolkit for applying ooid size measurements to reconstruct the carbonate chemistry of ancient waters and ancient pCO2 that will be widely useful to the scientific community. This objective will be accomplished by (1) creating a standardized and reproducible workflow for measuring and interpreting ooid size data, and (2) expanding the utility of this proxy by assembling a large suite of ooid size data from Cenozoic carbonate-producing lakes in the western US to test and refine the application of ooid size as a pCO2 constraint. The education and outreach component of this project will design, test, and share an educational platform consisting of a virtual and physical “Sand Library” paired with inquiry-based curriculum to improve Earth science education across a range of educational levels by illuminating the connections between the characteristics of sand grains and Earth surface processes. Sand Library development will be in partnership with a local Title I STEM magnet school and will engage with students in classrooms, provide professional development to schoolteachers, and facilitate opportunities for STEM enrichment outside of the classroom.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.