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Jessie Pearl started as a MIT/WHOI joint program student under Jeff Donnelly and Kevin Anchukaitis. Jessie worked with NOSAMS to do help develop reconnaissance radiocarbon dating- a method to get quick radiocarbon results at a lower cost and at a reduced precision- for organic carbon samples. She finished her PhD at the University of Arizona and her work on the Atlantic white cedar, A late Holocene subfossil Atlantic white cedar tree-ring chronology from the northeastern United States, is now published. Jessie is now a post doc with the USGS at their Seattle Office.
Reference: Jessie K. Pearl, Kevin J. Anchukaitis, Jeffrey P. Donnelly, Charlotte Pearson, Neil Pederson, Mary C. Lardie Gaylord, Ann P. McNichol, Edward R. Cook, George L. Zimmermann, A late Holocene subfossil Atlantic white cedar tree-ring chronology from the northeastern United States, Quaternary Science Reviews, Volume 228, 2020, 106104, ISSN 0277-3791
Beverly Barnett, a graduate student at the University of Florida, came to NOSAMS as a graduate student intern. She analyzed radiocarbon in chronological layers of fish otoliths and eye lenses to develop natural, permanent biogeochemical markers of petrocarbon in the northern Gulf of Mexico food web following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Her most recent work was published earlier this year: Life history of northern Gulf of Mexico Warsaw grouper Hyporthodus nigritus inferred from otolith radiocarbon analysis.
Reference: Barnett BK, Chanton JP, Ahrens R, Thornton L, Patterson WF III (2020) Life history of northern Gulf of Mexico Warsaw grouper Hyporthodus nigritus inferred from otolith radiocarbon analysis. PLOS ONE 15(1): e0228254. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0228254
The Atlantic writer Carl Zimmer writes about the events that lead to the radiocarbon “bomb spike”, the lasting mark it has left in this world, and how scientists are studying it. The article features work from Researcher Mary Lardie Gaylord et al. and their work on radiocarbon dating tree rings on a European beech tree in Woods Hole.
Nuclear Tests Marked Life on Earth With a Radioactive Spike , By Carl Zimmer
“Even as it disappears, the “bomb spike” is revealing the ways humans have reshaped the planet.”
Alec Lackmann et al. report on the oldest freshwater teleosts:
Scientists look to sediment cores from Caicos Island to gain insights about a monster, modern-day hurricane. Read More…
Research Assistants Lily Sanborn and Mary Lardie Gaylord joined the Geodynamics program to Newfoundland, Canada to learn more about North Atlantic Climate & Civilization. They and other students explored how changes in North Atlantic ocean circulation, considered by many as the major driver of global climate, had influenced human exploration and colonization. The study tour to Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, (June 6 -14) taught them how the glacial geology of the landscape was shaped by melting ice sheets at the end of last ice age. The group also explored the only North American Viking settlement, a 15th century Basque Whaling site, hiked in Gros Morne National Park (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), and saw icebergs first-hand!
Four thousand years ago, the Harappan civilization thrived in what is now modern-day Pakistan. By 1800 BC their cities were abandoned. Now a team of scientists think they have discovered where they went.
This video highlights the work of WHOI scientist Liviu Giosan and some members of NOSAMS (where his samples were analyzed).
Who is WHOI? is a short video highlighting different scientists and answering what it means to work for WHOI. Look for NOSAMS staff throughout the film: 00:56 Kalina Gospodinova, 00:59 Josh Burton and Brett Longworth, 01:07 Josh Burton, 03:27 Josh Burton, 04:05 Anne Cruz.
Please follow the latest news and updates from our lab on Twitter: @NOSAMSLab
Frenkel is the lead author on a paper recently published in the journal Deep Sea Research I. Research for her paper, “Quantifying bamboo coral growth rate nonlinearity with the radiocarbon bomb spike: A new model for paleoceanographic chronology development,” was done with the help of co-author Hannah Miller ’17; LaVigne served as senior author. Also involved in the project were colleagues Tessa Hill at UC Davis, and Ann McNichol and Mary Lardie Gaylord at the National Ocean Sciences Accelerator Mass Spectrometry facility (NOSAMS) at Woods Hole. LaVigne said Frenkel successfully used radiocarbon dating techniques to reconstruct how corals grow, “and she found out that the growth rates of these corals slow down as they get larger. Previously it had been thought they grew at a constant rate. This is a critical finding for paleoceanographers who use these corals as climate archives,” she continued, “as it allows us to interpret our climate records with a more precise timescale. And because this advances our understanding of how bamboo corals grow, it helps us measure how quickly deep sea coral habitats might recover from damage.” Learn more at…