About This Project

By filling in the missing gaps present in geologic record, we can reconstruct past environmental conditions. This can be used to gain insight into the current climate threats today. No time in the past better mirrors current environmental conditions than the End-Permian. We intend to sample the Permian Triassic Boundary (PTr), of the Mino-Terrane, located in Central Japan to gain a better understanding of global conditions during the PTr. and verify results generated from Mount Jesmond.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

Mount Jesmond, British Columbia and the Mino Terrane are the only two known paleo-seamounts recording deposition in the largest and fully open PTr ocean. Sediments deposited on these sea-mounts are more likely to record global ocean paleoenvironmental conditions due to the lack of continental influences during marine sediment deposition. Over the last year I have done extensive work on the paleoenviromental reconstruction of Mount Jesmond here at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Extensive work on the Paleontology for the Mino Terrane has been done (Sano et al, 2010). I hope to expand on this work using geochemical proxies to determine environmental conditions, such as primary productivity, temperature, and oxygenation. Thus verifying the results found from the Mount Jesmond site.

What is the significance of this project?

The proposed research has broad implications for our understanding of and capacity to predict and mitigate impacts of future climate change on ocean systems. Moreover, it provides unique opportunities to integrate earth systems approaches to the reconstruction of our planet’s deep past. Given the increased focus on future climate impacts, particularly on oceans, the proposed research will fill a critical knowledge gap and allow us to more accurately speak to how the ocean changed across the most significant extinction in our Earth’s history and how these changes influence our understanding of predicted future changes.

What are the goals of the project?

The primary goal of this project is to procure samples from the Mino Terrane, in Central Japan. By doing this we insure that knowledge stored in the rock record is not lost. Human and natural factors threaten the resolution at which samples can be collected. We intend to collect high resolution samples to analyse at the University of Massachusetts Boston where we will then publish our findings.