Speaker: Joel Hudley
Topic: Sclerochronology, Pliocene, Isotopes, Increments
Seminar Title: Using bivalves to investigate seasonal to multi-decadal marine climate variability
Abstract: Our current knowledge of past climate variability is based primarily on the use of short-lived, seasonal to annually resolved biological proxies, resulting in long, continuous, high-resolution time series that provide millennial to sub-millennial resolution (Niemitz and Bilups, 2005; Williams et al., 2009). However, these data are inadequate to address important issues associated with multi-decal phenomena such as global or regional teleconnections like the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) or the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Williams et al. (2009) state that Pliocene studies acknowledge this lack of high-resolution data and have portended that shell carbonate of long-lived fauna will provide data capable of addressing these issues and fill the current dearth of well-calibrated, high-resolution proxies in important Pliocene deposits. This seminar will show you how bivalve sclerochronology, using both growth increment data and stable isotope analysis, is used to investigate past seawater variability along the western North Atlantic.
Host: Steven Lower
