Developing Rare Earth Elements as a Paleoceanographic Proxy for bottom Water Oxygen, Water Mass, and Carbon Cycling: Separating Primary and Diagenetic Influences

Oregon State University, Corvallis OR

Investigators

Abstract

The distribution of Rare Earth Elements (REEs) depends on the redox behavior of the environment. Therefore, past oceanographic conditions might be elucidated by studying the REE content of foraminifera in deep sea sediments. This has proven to be a difficult analytical task however because this set of elements is prone to contamination, and it is difficult to clean the foram shells to assure artifact-free interpretation. This work will utilize a newly developed flow-through leaching technique which hopefully will solve this difficult analytical problem. The technique will utilize automated ion chromatography interfaced to an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer (ICPMS).