| NSF Org: |
OCE Division Of Ocean Sciences |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | November 24, 2019 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | November 24, 2019 |
| Award Number: | 1946137 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Joseph Carlin
OCE Division Of Ocean Sciences GEO Directorate for Geosciences |
| Start Date: | January 15, 2020 |
| End Date: | December 31, 2023 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $413,392.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $413,392.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1033 MASSACHUSETTS AVE STE 3 CAMBRIDGE MA US 02138-5366 (617)495-5501 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
1033 Massachusetts Ave Cambridge MA US 02138-5366 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | Marine Geology and Geophysics |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.050 |
ABSTRACT
The PIs will measure a never-before-analyzed chemical property of ocean sediments ? variations in two trace isotopes of oxygen in barium sulfate particles. These data will provide a record of changes in ocean chemistry over the last 125 million years, changes that are driven by variations in the Earth?s carbon, oxygen and sulfur cycles. Understanding the history of the global cycles of these elements (carbon, oxygen, and sulfur) will help us understand the links between geological processes, natural climate change, and biological processes on land and in the ocean. Activities also include public outreach (via cartoon modules described the science), and the project will support training of a graduate student.
This project will build a record of the 17O in sulfate from marine barite over the last 125 million years, using a recently-developed method that enables high-precision analysis of 17O in barite. The chemistry of marine sediments stands as one of the central catalogs of climatic evolution and earth surface change on geological timescales. The sulfur and oxygen isotopic composition of marine sulfate (as captured in barite) are two key records ocean chemistry over the last 125 million years. They are important because sulfate serves as an energy source for microbial life that is roughly 10 times larger than atmospheric oxygen, and that integrates across a wide range of biogeochemical processes and cycles, including those of carbon and iron. Recently, a new hypothesis was generated involving the influence of large igneous province formation on the sulfur isotope record. The new data proposed here ? 17O in barite ? will be used to test this hypothesis, and more broadly, to better understand the C, S, and O cycles through the Cretaceous and Cenozoic.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
The history of earth's life and climate is recorded in marine sedimentary rocks. A subset of this catalogue, evaporite minerals, provide a unique window into the salt carried by seawater through time. The source of one of these salts - seawater sulfate - carries information about the composiiton of the atmopshere and as such, has been used as a proxy for the ancient relationship between CO2 and O2. Through this award, our work has developed that proxy and applied it to portions of Earth history were it had not yet been explored. In series, we first investigated whether these evaporite minerals faithfully captured a seawater composition (Waldeck., Olson et al 2022 - a study of Messinian aged evaporites from the Mediteranean), which they do. We next built a 130 million year record of sulfate taken from marine sediment cores, where we learned that the isotope composition of that sulfate reflects microbial activity, and not an atmopsheric source (Waldeck et al., PNAS 2022). In contrast, a study of 3200 million year old sulfate recorded a purely atmopsheric signal reflective of an atmosphere without oxygen (Olson et al., EPSL 2022). In our final contribution from this award (Waldeck, Olson et al, Nature in review), we temporally pinpoint the transition between these two states - one where sulfate is an atmospheric proxy to one where sulfate is recording biogeochemistry. This transition is coincident with the colonization of the continents by land plants and the associated development of terrstrial soils.
Last Modified: 04/23/2024
Modified by: David T Johnston
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