Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Research Summary ) Limestones, made of marine fossils, are archives of evolution in the marine biosphere, our best record of past oceans and development of the ocean-atmosphere system, amongst the nation's most prolific hydrocarbon reservoirs, and aquifers for fresh waters. Research is focused on the least understood but widespread type of limestone, those that formed in cool to very cold ocean waters. Studies are located in the modern ocean and the rock record and include the Southern Ocean (the largest modern area of these deposits), relatively young rocks of similar composition exposed onshore, limestones in the Canadian Arctic that formed during the Late Paleozoic Ice Age (LPIA-350-245 Ma), and carbonates that were deposited during the most profound glaciation the world has ever known (Neoproterozoic ~800 Ma) and exposed in the Mackenzie Mountains, NWT and Australia. ) Funds are requested for the: 1) acquisition and analysis of marine samples from the Australian continental shelf and slope, 2) detailed study of relatively unknown modern cold-water neritic environments wherein kelp control production of carbonate sediment, 3) documentation of the relationship between nutrients and coral reef growth at the tropical-temperate interface, 4) utilization of bryozoan proxies to determine specific cool-water paleoceanographic environments, 5) establishment of sedimentological and paleontological criteria to define boundaries between depositional realms, 6) use of the LPIA to understand how the globe came out of a glacial period like the one we are in today, 7) determination, via the nature of carbonate sedimentation, how the ocean evolved during the Neoproterozoic global glaciation just before the evolution of animals and finally, 8) experimentation to determine, via direct observation under controlled conditions, how microbes affect specific aspects of carbonate sediment formation. A total of 11 students will be trained.