UTIG RESEARCH PROJECTS ARCHIVE
Principal Investigator |
Institution |
|---|---|
University of Texas Institute of Geophysics | |
In collaboration with: | |
John Jaeger | Florida |
Ross Powell | Northern Illinois University |
Joseph Stoner | University of Colorado at Boulder |
Ellen Cowan | Appalachian State University |
Bruce Finney | University of Alaska-Fairbanks |
Funding Agency: NSF OCE, award #0351620
Start Date: May 1, 2004
Expires: April 30, 2007 (Estimated)
Abstract
As part of a site survey for a proposed IODP program to drill marine sediments associated with late
Cenozoic climate change and tectonic activity along the southern Alaskan margin, the researchers will
combine efforts with an already funded piston coring and shallow imaging cruise and will acquire
additional piston cores and high-resolution seismic images at proposed Gulf of Alaska drill sites.
This region is believed to be analogous to, but have a smaller influence than, the Tibetan plateau
in terms of the possible feedback between climate change and tectonics. The coring program has been
designed to provide temporal resolution at sub-decadal to millennial time scales and sufficient
spatial resolution to capture some of the variability in the provenance of marine sediments derived
from glaciated source areas. The researchers will use the recovered core material to constrain the
timing of deposition, sediment mixing rates, sediment fluxes, and sediment sources, to infer glacial
dynamics, and to characterize basic visual and physical properties. In collaboration with Oregon State
University colleagues, they will obtain additional information about paleotemperature, salinity, and
oxygen conditions. The researchers will also process the marine seismic data for use in sequence
stratigraphic correlations and baseline characterization of the proposed IODP drill sites.