Climate scientists, science managers, and policy makers responsible for making policy decisions on the intervention and mitigation of human-induced climate must understand the past states of Atlantic circulation to determine its response to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations (IPCC WG1, 2007). To do this, they must understand the geologic boundary settings that permit present conditions. Much of the geologic and hydrologic information about the MAB and MACP region is well documented. Properly using this knowledge to in interpret past conditions is essential in the following studies.
The methods used in this dissertation produce long, sub-annually resolved climate reconstructions of significantly important intervals during the late Cenozoic along the western margin of the North Atlantic basin. Successfully deciphering shell isotopic data from the Recent and MPWP endemic species allow further investigation of various
41
Quaternary events (e.g. Little Ice Age, Young Dryas, and the Holocene extinction), and demonstrate that marine bivalve fossil records permit a unique opportunity to study physical ocean trends during climate change episodes on long time scales. The results of this work provide much needed proxy series data for modelers attempting to reconstruct environmental and climatic changes in shallow marine settings along the low to mid- latitude gradient of the MACP.
This research is innovative because it incorporates both increment and isotope sclerochronology, and paleoclimatology to understand, reconstruct and compare variations in environmental patterns during warming climate intervals. The estimations and comparisons of past parameter values to modern records allow the study other larger questions about global warming intervals, such as: (1) are there changes in the intensity of geostrophic and thermohaline circulation experienced along the western boundary of the North Atlantic; (2) are there shifts in the boundaries of shelf provinces waters due to these changes in intensity; and (3) are past natural (pre-industrial) ocean-atmospheric interactions similar to the baseline anthropogenically-altered modern analogs or are they radically different?
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Figure 2.1. Physical Setting of eastern North America and the western Atlantic Ocean Basin.
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Figure 2.2 Generalized onshore embayment and major structural features map othe Atlantic Coastal Plain (after Ward et al., 1991).
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Figure 2.3. Schematic map and cross-section of the eastern North American coastal plain and western Atlantic basin. Upper panel shows cold (blue) and warm water (red) surface currents. Lower panel is a cross-section through Virginia from the Appalachian Highlands to the 250 meter bathymetric line (500× vertical
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Figure 2.4. Filled contour map showing the percent sand-sized sediment along the eastern North American continental shelf and slope. (USGS usSEABED Data Series 118 (2005)).
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Figure 2.5. Pliocene stratigraphic nomenclature for the coastal plain of a combined North Carolina and Virginia. Column also shows the mid Pliocene Warm Interval slab according to the PRISM Reconstruction.
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Figure 2.6. Flow chart showing the conventional methods employed in isotope paleothermometry.
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Figure 2.7 Bivalves examined for this study. 1) Spisula (Hemimactra) solidissima (Dillwyn, 1817), 2) Spisula (Hemimactra) solidissima similis (Say, 1822), 3) Spisula (Hemimactra) confraga (Conrad, 1833), 4) Spisula modicella (Conrad, 1833), 5)
Glycymeris americana (DeFrance, 1826), 6) Costaglycymeris subovata (Say, 1824), and 7) Panopea reflexa (Say, 1824).
CHAPTER 3: ADDRESSING THE SINGLE COUNTER PROBLEM USING A