Quaternary Geochronology of Antarctic Glacial Marine Sediments

Robertson Shelf (East Antarctica) and the Antarctic Peninsula (West Antarctica). The core sites chosen for this work are the focus of ongoing paleoenvironmental studies, and provided us with a broad range of depositional environments and organic carbon sources, with the idea that the results of our study could be extrapolated to the locations of other studies on the Antarctic continental margin.

Project

PI Peter Sedwick was responsible for the analysis of cores from two sites on the Mac. Robertson Shelf (the Nielsen Basin and Iceberg Alley), while co-PI Eugene Domack was responsible for analysis of cores from two sites on the Antarctic Peninsula (the Scholleart Drift and the Vega Drift). This report focuses on the results for Antarctic Peninsula cores; detailed results for the Mac.

Robertson Shelf cores are presented in co-PI Peter Sedwick's final project report. To date 63 samples from kasten cores 49 and 8 have been analyzed for (1) 14C activity at the NOSAMS facility at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and (2) analysis of uranium-series radionuclides (for calculation of unsupported lead-210 activity) by gamma spectrometry in 20 subsamples.