HR: 14:10h
AN: PP23C-03    [Abstracts]
TI: Preliminary Results From The CHEETA Cruise Transect: Bulk And Molecular Proxies For Terrigenous Organic Matter Supply
AU: * Eniola, O
EM: olubunmi.eniola@ncl.ac.uk
AF: Newcastle University, 3rd Floor Devonshire Building University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle upon tYNE, NE1 7RU, United Kingdom
AU: Talbot, H M
EM: helen.m.talbot@ncl.ac.uk
AF: Newcastle University, 3rd Floor Devonshire Building University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle upon tYNE, NE1 7RU, United Kingdom
AU: Wagner, T
EM: thomas.wagner@ncl.ac.uk
AF: Newcastle University, 3rd Floor Devonshire Building University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle upon tYNE, NE1 7RU, United Kingdom
AU: DeMenocal, P
EM: peter@ldeo.columbia.edu
AF: Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Colombia, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University Geoscience 211 Route 9W Palisades, NY 10964, New York, NY 10964, United States
AU: Eglinton, T
EM: teglinton@whoi.edu
AF: Woods Hole, Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry Dept Fye Laboratory MS#4 360 WoodsHole Road, Woods Hole MA02543 1543, Woods Hole, MA 02543-1, United States
AB: In July, 2007 a sediment coring and water sampling cruise aboard R/V Oceanus was conducted off the Portuguese and NW African margins as part of the CHEETA (Changing Holocene Environments of the Eastern Tropical Atlantic) program. Gravity core and multicore pairs were recovered at 28 stations along a transect from 40°N-15°N paralleling the continental slope. One of the major goals of the CHEETA program is to utilize multiple organic proxies including the abundance and isotopic composition of higher plant leaf wax alkanes, and the distribution of soil-specific bacterial tetraether and hopanoid lipids to constrain regional variations in continental supply. The meridional array of multicore top samples cover different climate and vegetation zones in the SW Mediterranean and NW Africa, that transmit terrigenous signals to the adjacent continental margin via both eolian and fluvial processes, providing a rare opportunity to assess the sensitivity of these different proxies to continental supply, climate, and vegetation under modern conditions. The molecular analyses are used to assess the validity of different continental proxies, in particular of soil organic matter, for reconstruction of past continental climate and hydrological conditions in subtropical and tropical eastern Africa. Index terms 4912 Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modelling 1631 Land/atmosphere interactions
DE: 0414 Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling (0412, 0793, 1615, 4805, 4912)
DE: 1631 Land/atmosphere interactions (1218, 1843, 3322)
SC: Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology [PP]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting