Project Description

This project will assess the Holocene dynamics of oceanographic processes on the Southeast Brazilian Bight (western South Atlantic), a region affected by a west-boundary equatorial current, El niño-related coastal runoff events, and coastal and shelf-break upwelling events.  The post-doctoral research associate will be directly involved with the assembly and analysis of several centennial-resolution time series of amino acid dated marine invertebrate shells assembled over multiple millennia.  The current project is an expansion of the post-doctoral research associate’s dissertation research, and will consist of two distinct research directions.  First, shells from additional dredge sites along the Brazilian Atlantic Coast will be dated using amino acid racemization (AAR) calibrated with AMS radiocarbon, resulting in multiple concurrent time series for two species across the Brazilian shelf.  Second, various geochemical profiles (δ¹³C, δ¹⁸O, Ba/Ca, Sr/Ca) will be extracted from each dated shell, enabling an analysis of these environmental proxy data at multiple spatial and temporal scales.