Development and Novel Applications of Geochemical Proxies in Marine and Terrestrial Carbonate Records
Description:... Information on parameters like global ice volume or nutrient availability is critical for developing and testing models of climate and environmental conditions in the past few thousand years. However, reliable measurements of such parameters only go back about a century and, before the advent of satellites, were sparsely distributed across the planet. Instrumental records can be extended through the use of geochemical proxies in well-dated carbonate deposits, for example, Sr/Ca ratios in coral aragonite cores as a proxy for sea surface temperature. Due to ongoing advances in analytical and micro-sampling techniques, these proxies now comprise a multitude of elemental ratios, isotopic systems, and redox couples incorporated in carbonate minerals precipitated by numerous organisms and processes.
Novel geochemical proxies in carbonate mineral records are being developed by scientists from an increasingly broad spectrum of fields and applied to an ever-growing number of environmental systems and questions, using a wide variety of advanced analytical instruments and methods. Concurrently, these developments are leading to new insights that enable established proxies to be reevaluated and improved. The time is right for a Research Topic that brings these experts together and helps them push their efforts forward by comparing notes, reviewing the present state of the science, and highlighting outstanding problems or controversies.
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