| Summary: | During the present period of significant climate flux, scientists are attempting to understand and constrain the way in which Earth responds to these changes, as well as what these changes mean for life on the planet. The polar regions (the Arctic and Antarctic) are particularly sensitive to climatic perturbations, and they house extensive evidence of the impact that warming has had in the past, from changing ocean chemistries to the relationship between glacial retreat and fluctuations in sea level. As part of an NSF-supported Research Experience for Undergraduates, a group of students traveled to Ny-Alesund, Svalbard, Norway in the summer of 2011 to conduct individual research projects relating to sedimentology and climate studies. Svalbard is an archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean with a variety of terrains that makes it conducive to studying different aspects of the Holocene geologic record. Sediments throughout the archipelago capture Holocene and modern proxies for past climate fluctuation. This summer’s project was based in Kongsfjorden, a northwest-trending fjord with two actively retreating tidewater glaciers (Kronebreen and Kongsvegen) at its head. Rapid sedimentation rates in Kongsfjorden during glacial retreat have resulted in a high-resolution record of the past few decades. This individual research project (as part of an ongoing senior thesis) seeks to analyze sediment-core geochemistry from the sediments on the floor of Kongsfjorden in a chronostratigraphic framework, using a variety of analytical techniques. This poster presents a multidisciplinary application of X-ray fluorescence, total organic content, Cs-137 and Pb-210 radioisotopic dating, and other methods of sediment core analysis to infer paleoclimatic states.
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