EAGER: Deglacial Chronology of Bermuda Rise

该奖项由“早期概念探索研究基金”（EAGER）项目资助，用于一个项目，该项目旨在研究百慕大隆起东北部2万年前深水沉积物中放射性碳测年结果令人困惑的不一致的原因和意义。深，东北百慕大上升是一个经典的位置，在最后一个冰期的气候研究，因为它的高沉积率和有孔虫保存良好。由于它也包含了最深的气候变化记录之一，并且百慕大上升的核心已经研究了30多年，它已成为气候历史的标准参考部分。因此，正确的放射性碳定年对于校准该地区的时间至关重要，如果年龄定年的不一致是系统性的，而不仅仅是局部性的，或许也适用于其他地区。这项研究活动很好地符合EAGER项目潜在的变革、高风险和探索性，因为它假设该项目的结果将表明，通过测定每个样本的年代，海底沉积物可以“未混合”。如果这一假设被拒绝，那么由此产生的年表将对目前的情况有所改善，因为重要的结果正在等待一个改进的年龄模型才能发表。然而，如果这个假设被接受，新的年表可能会激发对这个和北大西洋西部其他地方的新研究。作为该项目的目标，百慕大隆起的岩心将是未来研究人员的宝贵资源，因为它们将具有内部一致的地层学和年代学，未来海洋和气候变化的代用物将在一个共同的时间和沉积学框架中联系起来。

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.