Figure 1: Map of coral sample locations |
Figure 2: Brad Linsley coral drilling
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Figure 3: Cutting a small coral head on the saw |
Figure 4: Laser ablation setup in Lab.
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| Corals precipitate skeletons of aragonite, a form of calcium
carbonate. The skeletal material contains trace impurities that in some cases reflect the chemistry of the seawater in
which the coral is growing. While much work has been done to develop proxy records of sea surface conditions
(e.g. temperature) from the isotopic composition of the calcium carbonate and the concentrations of relatively
abundant impurities such as Sr and Ba, there is still much to learn about the stories told by the variations of
less abundant elements in annually banded coral skeletons. Graduate student Michele LaVigne is developing new
ICP-MS methods, including laser ablation methods, for determining multi-element records in coral skeletons.
The primary current goal is to reconstruct past nutrient concentrations over time scales of decades to centuries, with
possible application to fossil corals thousands of years old. Graduate student Eleni Anagnostou is applying similar
methods to the analysis of solitary deep sea corals with the goal of reconstructing deep ocean chemical histories.
New preliminary data has the potential to greatly increase the information content available from coral skeleton
analysis. This work is being carried out in collaboration with Brad Linsley (SUNY Albany), Andrea Grottoli (Ohio
State University), and Alain Veron (CEREGE, France).
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