A Test for Extending the High-Resolution Climate History Back to ~450ka: The Interface Between Climate, Tectonics, and Sea-level Change in Santa Barbara Basin

University Of California-Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara CA

Investigators

Abstract

ODP Site 893 in Santa Barbara Basin provides one of the highest-resolution climatic and paleo-climatic archives since ~150 ka, yet IODP cannot extend this record owing to safety concerns. However, Santa Barbara Basin is tectonically active, and the sediment section dating back to at least ~450 ka or more is exposed at or near the seafloor where it is accessible to piston coring. Under this award, the PIs will integrate new multichannel seismic data collected by the USGS, with the existing precisely-navigated grids of high-resolution single-channel, multichannel industry, core and well data, along with multibeam bathymetry to determine the detailed stratigraphy in 3D, and precisely locate favorable sites for coring. This study is a pilot program to do some coring to test their tectonic reconstructions and to determine whether good cores can indeed be obtained to test the hypothesis that the well-documented millennial-scale global climate behavior typical of the last 60 ka has been operating as an integral part of climate history since ~450 ka.