K.D. Nelson Lecture Series – Dr. Catherine Davis

The Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences presents the K.D. Nelson Lecture Series featuring speaker Catherine Davis. Her talk is titled: Shell-abrate the past: Planktic foraminifera as proxies in low oxygen pelagic environments. 

Oxygen depleted marine environments, such as oxygen minimum zones, are expanding due to anthropogenic climate change. The extent and location of oxygen minimum zones has also varied during periods of past climate change. However, our ability to reconstruct past oxygen minimum zones and thus contextualize our present and future is frequently limited by a paucity of proxies for pelagic oxygen minimum zones. The shells of planktic foraminifer, Globorotaloides hexagonus, have recently been proposed as recorders of past oxygen minimum zones. I’ll focus here on the proxy potential of G. hexagonus isotope and conventional trace element chemistry by 1) presenting a recent example of the use of oxygen and carbon isotopes in reconstructing water column oxygenation structure, and 2) discussing new results that suggest trace metals in G. hexagonus shells are related to both conditions in the pelagic oxygen minimum zone and anaerobic metabolisms found in their immediate microenvironment.