School of Earth Sciences
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Deep-sea corals and climate
Supervisor: Dr Laura Robinson
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These two deep-sea scleractinian corals were collected in the Southern
Ocean, between the tip of Chile and Antarctica. The one on the right is live,
the one on the left is dead, and coated in a metal rich crust.
These corals live for about 100 years, and chemical signatures in the
carbonate skeletons record their living environment and how it has changed over time.
Photo by Dann Blackwood, USGS
Cold-water corals form an exciting new paleoclimate archive. Unlike reef-forming corals found in shallow tropical areas, cold-water corals are found in all of the ocean basins, at depths from a few metres to greater than 5,000m. The robust calcium carbonate skeletons of these corals are well preserved, containing signature of past climate events, and can be dated using the decay of uranium. This project will use the skeletons of these corals to explore past climate change from recent decadal timescales back to the last glacial period.
The project will use a combination of field and lab-based techniques. The initial part of the project will use geochemical analyses (clean lab and ICP-Mass spectrometry in the Bristol Isotope Group) to test and improve climate proxies within deep-sea skeletons. There will be opportunities to participate in field work to collect new samples including in a major research cruise to the Tropical Atlantic (see antarcticcorals.blogspot.com for an example) and diving in shallow waters (experience desirable but not required). An extensive sample set of corals from Equatorial and Polar regions is available for the project, allowing the freedom for the student to investigate ocean and climate questions from the recent e.g. ocean acidification or polar warming, to the long term e.g. why did the last ice age end?
Further Reading
- Roberts, J.M., Wheeler, A.J., Freiwald, A., 2006. Reefs of the deep: The biology and geology of cold-water coral ecosystems. Science 312 (5773), 543-547.
- Case, D. L., L. F. Robinson, et al. (2011). "Environmental and biological controls on Mg and Li in deep-sea scleractinian corals." Earth and Planetary Science Letters.
- Robinson, L.F., van de Flierdt, T., 2009. Southern Ocean evidence for reduced export of North Atlantic Deep Water during Heinrich event 1. Geology 37 (3), 195-198.
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