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Telephone 512-471-0453
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Fred integrates research in geology, biology, and chemistry to address geologic and environmental problems. He has expertise in the study of corals, in which sea-surface temperatures are precisely recorded as chemical variations in the calcium carbonate that forms their annual density bands. He is currently involved in two paleoclimate programs to document the temperature history in the Western Pacific Warm Pool region, an area that is critical to the Earth’s climate and weather. One program involves analyzing cores drilled from living corals from New Caledonia, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, and Papua New Guinea to obtain a record of climate extending back several hundred years; the other involves analyzing cores of fossil corals from uplifted reefs to obtain climate records for times back through the last glacial maximum about 22,000 years ago. On another project, Taylor is investigating Quaternary and contemporary crustal motions in the Southwest Pacific using coral reefs as recorders of tectonic deformation. Taylor also uses the Global Positioning System (GPS) to measure the horizontal plate motions that drive earthquakes and crustal deformation at the edges of tectonic plates in the South America, Southwest Pacific, the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica, and, most recently, West Antarctica. Fred is graduate research advisor or co-advisor to students for both masters and doctoral degrees.
Recent Research Projects
A Rapid Response to the 1 April 2007 Ms ~8.0 Earthquake in the Solomon Islands to Conduct Crustal Motion Measurements Using GPS and Coral Geodesy (funded by JSG)
Seismic Profiling of Rapidly Subsiding Reefs on Sabine Bank, Vanuatu: Preparing for a Future Opportunity to Drill Ancient Reefs Representing Off-Peak and Lowstand Sea Levels During MIS 2-5 (NSF plus additional JSG supplement)
Collaborative Research: Holocene/Deglacial Abrupt Climate Change and Variability of the Western Pacific Warm Pool from Multidecadal to Century Scale Coral Climate Records (NSF plus additional JSG supplement to initiate speleothem studies)
Fred's UTIG Contributions (Publications)
Recent Publications
Kilbourne, K.H., Quinn, T.M., Guilderson, T.P., Webb, R.S., and Taylor, F.W., 2007, Decadal- to interannual-scale source water variations in the Caribbean Sea recorded by Puerto Rican coral radiocarbon, Climate Dynamics, DOI 10.1007/s00382-007-0224-2
Holland, C.L., Scott, R., An, Soon-II, and Taylor, F.W., 2007, Propagating Decadal Sea Surface Temperature Signal Identified in Modern Proxy Records of the Tropical Pacific, Climate Dynamics, DOI 10.1007/s00382-006-0174-0.
Quinn, T. M. and Taylor, F.W., 2006, SST artifacts in coral proxy records produced by early marine diagenesis in a modern coral from Rabaul, Papua New Guinea, Geophys. Res. Letts., 33, L04601, doi:10,1029/2005GL024972.