Climate and Paleoclimate Studies
Healy-Oden Trans Arctic Expedition (HOTRAX)- As one of the co-PIs on the HOTRAX program, I seek to understand how the paleoceanography of the Arctic has changed during the Quaternary. This is a climatically sensitive region which is undergoing extensive changes today in response to anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing. We seek to understand the past warm periods in the Arctic as potential analogs to future change. Research in my lab related to this project is funded by the Office of Polar Programs at the National Science Foundation. I am currently funded to analyze hydrographic data and plankton tows from Leg 1 of the HOTRAX cruises, and to study the stratigraphy and clay mineralogy of Holocene sediment from the Arctic Margin of the Chukchi Sea by Diffuse Spectral Reflectance and XRF analysis. There are over a dozen collaborators on this international research project at several instutions in the US, Canada, and Sweden.
Baja California Paleoceanography- I am currently studying climate change on decadal to millennial time scales using deep sea cores collected off the tip of Baja California. My focus in these studies is to generate high resolution stratigraphic records by Diffuse Spectral Reflectance, to relate these proxies to lithologic components of the sediment, and to make inferences regarding changes in productivity to test hypotheses that relate changes in production to shifts in climate. This work is conducted in collaboration with Lex van Geen (Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory), Suzanne O'Connell (Wesleyan University), Walt Dean (USGS), Yan Zheng (Queens College), Jose Carriquiry (UABC), and Thomas Marchitto (UC).