Chemostratigraphic And Paleoclimatic Studies Of Cloverly Formation, Northern Wyoming, U.S.A, Queen Amarachi Kalu

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Early – Late Cretaceous transition in Western North America recorded a period of rapid climatic and tectonic change in Earth’s history. Major climate events associated with large igneous province eruptions caused several instances of ocean anoxic events (OAE) and perturbations to the global carbon (C) – cycle. These perturbations to the global C-cycle are observed in the bulk organic C record of both marine and terrestrial deposits and can be used to correlate units across major depositional basins. Major efforts are being made to generate time-constrained palaeontologic and paleoclimate information from the North American Cordilleran foreland basin and C-isotope …

History Of Ice-Rafting In The Arctic Ocean During Glacial Maxima Through Marine Isotope Stage 6, Shannon M. Cofield

OES Theses and Dissertations

Numerous studies attempted to reconstruct Arctic paleoclimate, specifically ice mass timing and locations, during glacial maxima. While some regions, like the Barents-Svalbard Ice Sheet (BSIS) are well-studied, they may benefit from a high-resolution paleo proxy. Other regions are highly contested, such as the East Siberian Sea or the presence of a central Arctic Ocean ice mass.

This research uses an Fe-grain provenance method to (1) define how the BSIS behaved during Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 2, 4, and 6, and when it retreated; (2) determine the presence and ages of Shelf Ice Masses (SIMs) in the Beaufort Sea and East …

Spatial Variations In Ancient Meteoric Water: An Investigation Of The Rattlesnake Tuff, Julian Michael Cohen

Dissertations and Theses

Volcanic glass has been used extensively as a paleoclimate proxy. Deuterium (2H) concentrations in glass have been found to be stable over geologic timescales, making δD a reliable proxy for ancient water chemistry. However, continued work revolves around better understanding how different factors affect preserved water in ash. Here, I analyze δD in the Rattlesnake Tuff (RST), a widespread ca. 7 Ma ashflow tuff, and create an isoscape to assess variations in δD across Oregon during that time. Additionally, I examine compositional data from glass shards to explore the relationship between δD and shard composition. The RST exhibits well defined …

Reconstructing Wildfire Regime During The Warm Paleocene-Eocene Climate Using Molecular Biomarkers From The Chuckanut Formation In Northwest Washington, U.S.A., Alexandra Thompson

WWU Graduate School Collection

Wildfires are expected to increase in frequency and severity as climate changes in the Pacific Northwest of North America. To better understand the effect of warming climate on wildfire regimes, I present the first reconstruction of past wildfire frequency and severity during the Paleocene-Eocene transition in northwest Washington state, U.S.A. The Chuckanut Formation is a late Paleocene to Eocene sedimentary unit with a robust paleobotanical record showing the existence of subtropical forests in northwest Washington during the Paleocene, transitioning to a relatively cooler Eocene, dominated by temperate mixed forests. Geochemical records of environmental change coinciding with Paleocene-Eocene climatic change in …

Antarctic Ice Sheet Stability During Warm Periods: Integrating Numerical Modeling With Geologic Data, Anna Ruth W. Halberstadt

Doctoral Dissertations

Sea level rise is one of the major social and environmental challenges that threatens modern civilization, yet the response of polar ice sheets to future warming is deeply uncertain. Mass loss from the Antarctic Ice Sheet is projected to dominate global sea level rise in the near future, but how much, and when, remains a key unknown. The challenges associated with projecting Antarctica’s future sea level contribution are derived from a knowledge gap of physical ice sheet processes in a world warmer than today, and a lack of understanding of climatic thresholds that drive potentially irreversible retreat. Future and even …

Experimental Insights Into The Origin Of Microcrystalline Calcites, Mohammed Hashim

Dissertations

A significant proportion of modern marine calcium carbonate sediments is dominated by metastable aragonite and high Mg calcite that either dissolves or stabilizes to low-Mg-calcite (calcite) or dolomite during diagenesis. Sediment dissolution and stabilization have implications for the CaCO3 budget in the ocean and carbon burial rates. Yet, the diagenetic conditions that promote each process and their relative importance are poorly understood. Further, stabilization most commonly produces calcite microcrystals that exhibit various textures and host micropores. Despite their ubiquity in the rock record, the controls on microcrystal textures remain unclear. Here, laboratory experiments were used to investigate aragonite-to-calcite stabilization as …

Microfabric Analysis Of Mid-Pliocene Amundsen Sea Interglacial Sediments Demonstrates A Link Between Iceberg Melt And Diatom Productivity (Iodp Exp. 379), Heather Leanne Furlong

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Anthropogenically induced climate change in the polar regions has rapidly become an emergent global issue, especially for low-lying coastal communities, which are most affected by sea-level rise. The future of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is of significant concern due to its history of instability and retreat, especially in light of the observed ongoing changes. Establishing rates of retreat is critical to forecasting future behavior of the WAIS, and previous studies have been unable to establish rates of ice sheet collapse in part because Antarctic continental shelf records are impacted by erosional hiatuses. In 2019, International Ocean Discovery Program …

Reconstructing Deglacial And Holocene Climatic And Environmental Change In The Snowy Mountains Of Southeast Australia, Aidan Warner Burdick

WWU Graduate School Collection

Multi-proxy, long-term records of deglacial and Holocene climatic and environmental change in southeast Australia are rare, leaving the region a gap in local and large-scale synoptic climate reconstructions. The Snowy Mountains include the highest and coldest regions of mainland Australia and were the only part of the mainland that was glaciated during the late Pleistocene. Lakes formed by the glaciers have provided continuous sediment traps since glacial retreat following the Last Glacial Maximum. In this report, I reconstruct the maximum ice extents of glaciers during the last glacial period and estimate their equilibrium line altitudes, revising the work of Barrows …

Floodplain Response To Eocene Thermal Maximum 2 In The Southern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming, U.S.A., Eve Lalor

WWU Graduate School Collection

Paleosols in the Willwood Formation of the Bighorn Basin, Wyoming contain a sedimentary and geochemical record of several early Eocene hyperthermal (rapid, global warming) events including the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) and the Eocene Thermal Maximum 2 (ETM2). Numerous studies of the PETM indicate environmental shifts including an overall decrease in precipitation and soil moisture, but the hydrologic response to the subsequent smaller Eocene hyperthermals remains poorly understood. In order to estimate potential precipitation changes during ETM2, I sampled floodplain paleosol horizons from Willwood Formation strata below, within, and above the stratigraphic carbon isotope excursion (CIE) that marks the ETM2. …

Plio-Pleistocene Antarctic Ice-Ocean Interactions In The Ross Sea, Catherine Prunella

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Warm, intermediate-depth Southern Ocean waters are implicated in recent Antarctic ice mass loss. Direct observations of Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) retreat are temporally limited, necessitating paleoceanographic records of ocean-ice interactions during past warm climate intervals. Deepsea and ice-proximal sediments record orbitally-paced glacial-interglacial fluctuations in AIS volume during the Plio-Pleistocene (last 5 million years; Ma), but the total contribution of the AIS and the role of ocean heat in these fluctuations remain unresolved. To address the response of Antarctica’s ice sheets to changing ocean temperatures during the Plio-Pleistocene, International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expedition 374 recovered sediments from the Ross Sea …

Stable Carbon And Oxygen Isotope Investigation Of Pleistocene Growing-Season Paleoclimate Using Tree-Ring Cellulose From The Missinaibi Formation, Adam Creek, James Bay Lowland, Canada, Jumin Lee

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The isotopic compositions of cellulose in tree rings provide a record of seasonal and annual climatic conditions such as precipitation and temperature. We analyzed stable isotopes of carbon (δ¹³C_cellulose) and oxygen (δ¹⁸O_cellulose) in early-wood and late-wood of five conifer sub-fossil wood samples from the Missinaibi Formation, which likely grew during the peak of Marine Isotope Substage (MIS) 5a (~82 kya) at Adam Creek, Ontario. There was no systematic difference between early-wood and late-wood for either δ¹³C_cellulose or δ¹⁸O_cellulose, suggesting similar climatic conditions throughout …

Late Paleozoic Climatic Reconstruction Of Western Argentina: Glacial Extent And Deglaciation Of Southwestern Gondwana, Kathryn N. Pauls

Theses and Dissertations

Throughout its history Earth has experienced both icehouse and greenhouse conditions. Shifts and transitions from one end member to the other are driven by numerous driving mechanisms on global, orbital and more local scales. In particular, the late Paleozoic ice age (LPIA) is thought to have been driven by global drivers such as the drift of the Gondwanan continent across the South Pole, fluctuations in atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and Milankovitch cycles. It was also affected by more local and regional drivers such as active tectonism along accretionary margins and changes in atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns. South American Gondwana provides …

Triple Oxygen Isotope Composition Of Carbonates, Jordan A.G. Wostbrock

Earth and Planetary Sciences ETDs

This dissertation presents a method of analyzing the triple oxygen isotope compositions of carbonates, presents an empirical calibration of the carbonate-water equilibrium fractionation line, presents a triple oxygen isotope equipped fluid-rock mixing model for carbonates to see-through diagenesis, and applies all these findings to ancient carbonate samples. Using modern carbonates and associate water, the following equations are calculated to describe equilibrium triple oxygen isotope fractionation of carbonates:

1000lnalpha¹⁸O_cc-wt=2.84x10⁶/T²-2.96 1),

Theta_cc-wt=-1.39/T+0.5305 2).

Using these fractionation equations provides an extremely useful tool to determine whether a carbonate sample is altered or preserves …

Multi-Proxy Characterization Of Acex Subunit 1/5 (The “Zebra” Interval) To Better Understand Sediment Deposition At This Critical Age Boundary And Paleoceanographic Transition, Victoria Hojnacki

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Sediment cores recovered from the Lomonosov Ridge on IODP Expedition 302, the Arctic Coring Expedition (ACEX), provided the first major insights into long-term Cenozoic history of climate and ocean conditions in the central Arctic. However, the ACEX record is hampered by a major hiatus or severely condensed interval (depending on age-model interpretations) at 198.7 mcd separating the middle Eocene and Miocene records. Lithologic subunit 1/5 lies above this depth horizon, and is informally called the “zebra interval” because of distinctive stripes - black and gray tilted and cross-banded silty-clay layers, up to 3 cm thick that characterize the lower ~2.5 …

A Diatom Proxy For Seasonality Over The Last Three Millennia At June Lake, Eastern Sierra Nevada (Ca), Laura Caitlin Streib

Theses and Dissertations--Earth and Environmental Sciences

The Sierra Nevada snowpack is vital to the water supply of California, the world’s sixth largest economy. Though tree ring and instrumental records show the dramatic influence of environmental change on California’s hydroclimate over the last millennium, few proxy archives assess winter precipitation variability farther back in time. Here, we use diatoms from a ~3,200 yr. old sediment core to reconstruct the paleolimnology of June Lake, a hydrologically closed glacial lake in the eastern Sierra Nevada. We test the hypothesis that limnologic and climatic changes control diatom assemblages at June Lake. Fossil diatom assemblages from June Lake sediments chiefly consist …

Evaluating Stable Isotope And Geochronologic Techniques For Paleoclimate Reconstruction: Case Study Of The Santa Cruz Formation, Argentina, Robin B. Trayler

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Stable isotope analysis has become the method of choice for many studies investigating the paleoecology and paleoclimate of fossil mammal faunas. While organic tissues (collagen, keratins, proteins) persist for < 10⁵ years highly mineralized tooth enamel is resistant to alteration and degradation and faithfully preserves its isotopic composition for millions (> 10⁶) years. Reconstructing past climates from these records relies on both understanding both micro-scale mechanisms of isotope incorporation into individual teeth, and macro-scale changes in isotope compositions over hundreds of thousands or millions of years. In this dissertation I address three questions.

First, how does the geometry and …

Eccentricity Modulation Of Precessional Variation In The Earth’S Climate Response To Astronomical Forcing: A Solution To The 41-Kyr Mystery, Rajarshi Roychowdhury

Doctoral Dissertations

The 41,000-year variability of Earth’s glacial cycles during the late Pliocene-early Pleistocene is usually attributed to variations in Earth’s obliquity (axial tilt). However, a satisfactory explanation for the lack of precessional variation in marine d¹⁸O records, a proxy for ocean temperature and ice-volume, remains contested. Here, a physically based climate model is used to show that the climatic effect of precession is muted in global isotope records due to two different mechanisms, with each dominating as a function of eccentricity. At low eccentricities (e0.019), the time-integrated summer insolation and number of positive degree-days impacting ice sheets varies at …

From Sea To Lake: The Depositional History Of Saint Albans Bay, Vt, Usa, Matthew Kraft

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Sediment accumulated in lakes stores valuable information about past environments and paleoclimatological conditions. Cores previously obtained from Saint Albans Bay, located in the Northeast Arm of Lake Champlain, VT record the transition from the Champlain Sea to Lake Champlain. Belrose (2015) documented the presence of a peat horizon separating the sediments of the Champlain Sea from those of Lake Champlain. Initially, this layer was thought to comprise the transition from the marine environment of the Champlain Sea to a freshwater wetland. However, based on the results from this study, the transition between marine and freshwater conditions is thought to be …

Calcic Paleosols In A Stratigraphic Context From Quaggasfontein, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa: Correlations In The Wapadsberg Pass Area And Implications For Late Permian Climate, Kaci B. Kus

Honors Theses

The Karoo Basin, South Africa, contains a reportedly continuous stratigraphic record spanning the terrestrial vertebrate extinction event equated with the Permian-Triassic boundary (PTB) in the marine record. The current hypothesis links this major loss in biodiversity and vertebrate turnover to a global change in climate towards aridification. Rapid climate change is interpreted to be reflected in continental rocks by a changeover from (1) greenish (Permian) to reddish (Triassic) mudrock, (2) a transition in the river architectures from meandering to braided regimes, and (3) wetland to calcic-bearing paleosols. Here, we present geochemical results on a 1.3-meter calcic paleoVertisol interval found ~34 …

Occupational Seasonality And Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction At Quebrada Jaguay 280, Stephanie Melissa Gruver

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Quebrada Jaguay 280 (QJ-280) is one of the oldest maritime archaeological sites in the New World. Previous excavations of the southern Peruvian coastal site have dated occupation from ~13,000-8,000 cal yr BP. These excavations also determined that the occupants of the site used preferential maritime resource procurement strategies and had an interzonal connection to the highlands. In 2017 a new excavation was conducted at QJ-280 and the remains of the marine mollusk Mesodesma donacium were recovered. Geochemical examinations on the shell remains informed on the occupational seasonality of the site and reconstructed sea surface temperatures experienced off the coast of …

Hydrogen, Carbon, And Oxygen Isotopes In Prosopis Sp. Trees: A New Climate Proxy For Holocene Paleoclimate In The Atacama Desert, Chile, Elizabeth Joy Olson

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The spatial ubiquity of trees in terrestrial ecosystems worldwide facilitates the use of stable isotope research in tree-rings to address a wide-range of interdisciplinary questions related to climate, ecology, archaeology, and hydrology. This dissertation focuses on the development and application of Prosopis tamarugo tree-ring stable isotope records as a paleoclimate proxy for the Atacama Desert, Chile. Current paleoclimate proxies from this region lack the spatial and temporal resolution to quantify a causal mechanism for observed Holocene hydroclimate variability. P. tamarugo tree-ring isotopes provide a high-resolution proxy that facilitates the reconstruction of hydroclimate variability at a regional scale. In order to …

Paleogene-Early Neogene Palynomorphs From The Eastern Equatorial Atlantic And Southeastern Florida, Usa: Biostratigraphy And Paleoenvironmental Implications, Walaa K. Awad

Doctoral Dissertations

"The transition from greenhouse conditions (Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, PETM) to icehouse conditions (Early Oligocene) is not well documented in tropical-subtropical regions. One hundred and five samples from Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Site 959 (Hole 959A and Hole 959D) in the Cote d'Ivoire-Ghana Transform Margin, Alo-1 Well in the northern Niger Delta (Anambra) Basin, Nigeria, and W-17001 in southeastern Florida were studied for their palynological contents. Dinoflagellate cysts were mainly utilized for age refinement and to detect subtle changes in paleoenvironment and paleoclimate during the Paleocene-Early Eocene (ODP Hole 959D and Alo-1 Well) and Late Eocene-Early Miocene (ODP Hole 959A and …

Arctic And North Atlantic Paleo-Environmental Reconstructions From Lake Sediments, Gregory A. De Wet

Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Using Stable Isotope Geochemistry To Determine Changing Paleohydrology And Diagenetic Alteration In The Late Cretaceous Kaiparowits Formation, Ut Usa, Daigo Yamamura

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Western Interior Basin of the North America preserves one of the best sedimentary and paleontological records of the Cretaceous in the world. The Upper Cretaceous Kaiparowits Formation is a rapidly deposited fluvial sequence and preserves one of the most complete terrestrial fossil record of the North America. Such a unique deposit provides an opportunity to investigate the interaction between the physical environment and ecology. In an effort to decipher such interaction, stable isotope composition of cements in sedimentary rocks, concretions and vertebrate fossils were analyzed.

Despite the difference in facies and sedimentary architecture, the isotope composition does not change …

A Quaternary Climate Record From A Uinta Mountains, Usa, Fen Core With Emphasis On Sediment Pyrolysis, Samuel Abraham Hillam

Theses and Dissertations

The northern slopes of the Uinta Mountains, Utah were previously glaciated and contain many landslides. The Tokewanna Landslide is very large and lacks Quaternary faults. Presumably, increased moisture was the failure trigger. A Quaternary climate record from a cored fen, developed in a small basin between hummocks, was reconstructed using sediment pyrolysis, biomass balance, and magnetic susceptibility. Pyrolysis is used to define Hydrogen Indices that are used to delineate wetter and drier conditions based on the kerogen type - Type III being drier, and Type II wetter. The data were matched to a time/depth curve and compared to other Uinta …

Cyclostratigraphy And Sedimentation Of The Cenomanian-Turonian Tuscaloosa Marine Shale, Christian Gilbert Kunhardt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A cyclostratigraphic and geochemical analysis was conducted on the basal high resistivity zone of the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale to determine if orbital forcing is apparent in mineralogical data suites. Geochemical data suites obtained via x-ray diffraction from five cored wells located near the southern Mississippi/Louisiana border were used in the study. The results were used in concert with previously published insolation and biostratigraphic data and unpublished stable carbon isotope data to determine sedimentation rate, to identify and correlate the cretaceous oceanic anoxic event 2 (OAE 2) recovery period within the studied interval, and to determine the possible mechanisms of orbital …

Palynological Studies Of Holocene Lake Sediments In The Missouri Ozarks, Robert D. Haselwander

Doctoral Dissertations

"Five small lakes in southeast Missouri (Frisco, Pine Forest, and Bray Area lakes [Phelps County], and Cypress and Blue ponds [Bollinger County]) were cored for paleolimnological studies. Cores were evaluated for their sedimentology, palynology, and geochemistry. In two of these lakes (Bray Area and Pine Forest lakes) the planktonic algae were also studied in the water column, along with ecological parameters. Algae in the sediments were compared to algae in the water to understand the resistance of different species to decay, and a suggested methodology for this work is described. Reconstructions of the past environments around each lake were created …

Development And Validation Of A Physically Based Ela Model And Its Application To The Younger Dryas Event In The Graubünden Alps, Switzerland, Durban Gregg Keeler

Theses and Dissertations

The rapid rate of global warming currently underway highlights the need for a deeper understanding of abrupt climate change. The Younger Dryas is a Late-Glacial climate event of widespread and unusually rapid change whose study can help us address this need for increased understanding. Reconstructions from the glacial record offer important contributions to our understanding of the Younger Dryas due to (among other things) the direct physical response of glaciers to even minor perturbations in climate. Because the glacier equilibrium line altitude (ELA) provides a more explicit comparison of climate than properties such as glacier length or area, ELA methods …

Paleoclimate Implications From Stable Isotope Analysis Of Sedimentary Organic Carbon And Vertebrate Fossils From The Cedar Mountain Formation, Ut, U.S.A., Garrett Andrew Hatzell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Oxygen and carbon isotopic compositions of fossilized vertebrate teeth and bone were analyzed to determine isotopic values of vertebrate faunal diet from the early Cretaceous Cedar Mountain Formation of Utah. Results for δ18O of PO4 (δ18Op) (Suarez et al., 2014) from the same data set have been compared to the δ18O of CO3 (δ18Oc) portion of teeth and turtle shell to determine if diagenetic alteration of the isotopes has occurred by plotting the line of best fit equation that models the relationship between unaltered δ18OP and δ18OC of modern mammals from Iacumin et al., 1996. Results indicate slight diagenesis of …

Mid-Holocene Speleothem Climate Proxy Records From Florida And Belize, Anna L. Pollock

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As global temperatures rise due to anthropogenic climate change, water resources, thus economies, are threatened. A geologically recent period of increased temperatures is the mid-Holocene and an investigation of its climate may allow for a better understanding of future precipitation and changes to regional water resources. The regions of interest are tropical Northern Central America and subtropical North America with Belize and Florida representing each climate zone. By reconstructing mid-Holocene climate in Florida and Belize, I hope to provide a better understanding of how increased temperatures and a reduced latitudinal temperature gradient impacts both precipitation patterns and variability. Today, drivers …