Primary Research Concentrations:

The Earth History Research Group at UCSC includes faculty, staff, and students from 3 departments in the Natural Sciences.  Collectively, this group is concerned with the short and long-term dynamics of Earth Systems.  Active research programs are currently addressing a diverse array of scientific issues in several sub-disciplines of the Earth, Marine, and Biological Sciences.  This includes projects designed to understand the dynamics of rapid global warming in the latest Paleocene, to reconstruct Pleistocene deep water circulation, to elucidate the foraging strategies of modern and fossil pinnipeds, and to model Eocene greenhouse atmospheric dynamics or Pleistocene alpine glacial erosion rates.

The UCSC Stable Isotope Lab (SIL) currently supports over a dozen projects of the Earth History Research Group as well as projects of investigators in the Earth & Ocean Sciences, Biology, and Anthropology. The lab also supports a number of projects at other research institutions in the Bay area.  The SIL is equipped with 2 state-of-the-art automated gas mass spectrometers, and several automated preparation devices including autocarbs, a multiprep, and an elemental analyzer.

Other Earth and Ocean Sciences facilities utiltized by the Earth History Group include the Thermal Ionization Mass Spectrometry Lab, the Elemental Analysis Facility (ICP-MS, XRD, AA), Climate Modeling Lab,  Processes Geomorphology Lab, and the IMS Analytical Lab.

EARTH HISTORY RESEARCH CONCENTRATIONS:

Early Cenozoic Paleoceanography:

Several SIL supported projects are oriented toward understanding the dynamics of the early Cenozoic oceans and climate system. Much of this research focuses on 3 specific periods of unusually large or rapid climate change; the latest Paleocene (~55 Ma), and the Eocene/Oligocene (~34 Ma) and Oligocene/Miocene (~24 Ma) boundaries. The former is characterized by an unprecedented global warming event while the latter 2 periods are characterized by deep but transient glacial maxima. The research attempts to quantify various aspects of these events including, the rate and magnitude of changes in ocean temperature and ice-volume. Research is also being carried out to define the characteristics and dynamics of marine ecosystem recovery following the K/T boundary mass extinction event (~65 Ma).

Neogene Paleoceanography:

Several SIL supported projects are oriented toward understanding the circulation and climate dynamics of the Neogene oceans. The stable isotope ratios of foraminifera collected from deep sea sediment cores are used to reconstruct surface ocean circulation, and integrated with ocean model simulations to understand mechanisms of climate change. Several projects are oriented toward developing modern calibrations between planktonic foraminifer isotopes and sea water properties and chemistry, and on Quaternary climate changes in the Greenland and Norwegian Seas as well as in the tropical Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

Paleobiology:


LINKS TO EARTH HISTORY GROUP PERSONNEL
 

 
 



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