Scientists drilling in Clear Lake to see the future
drilling deep into the sediment under the old Clear Lake, UC Berkeley researchers are important tips for the future of plant and animal life, examining how the changing climate has changed life in the distant past.
drilling ends next week and then 17 researchers on the project will analyze thousands of tiny pollen grains grown up far from the lake cores to study plant species, large and small to survive the challenges of climate change during the previous periods. Major episodes of global warming – and cold spells, too – hit the Earth thousands of years ago, leaving a record of the past.
These data, which microscopic bits of plant material that constitutes evidence, scientists want to study.
“We know that climate change is happening now,” said Cindy Looy, UC Berkeley plant pathologist who supervises drilling project team. “By understanding how it affects plant life long ago, when the changes were even stronger, we have to better predict the future.” Looy drillers have worked for weeks, and the Clear Lake arm platform, they have pulled 500 ft 3-in noise levels, where they cut a 10-foot pieces. Drilling stopped 650 meters on Sunday, depth, showing 130,000 years of life in the region Looy said. Both the doublet core will be drilled in the vicinity of a few days later, so we can compare.Long-ago warming
pubDate team vegetation samples will come from the last interglacial warming period, known as the period that began about 130,000 years ago and lasted about 15,000 years in which the earth was much warmer than it is today – perhaps as much as 5-9 degrees Fahrenheit higher than today’s temperature, according to some estimates from researchers who have studied ice cores.
Berkeley team is focused on the more recent period of climate change, the so-called mysterious younger dryas, which began about 13,000 years ago and lasted slightly more than 1,000 years. The average global temperature dropped rapidly at the beginning of a full 5 degrees, and scientists now call the time of the “Big Freeze”. So, within 1,000 years the earth is heated again, maybe as much as 18 degrees. Theories are a lot of what caused the striking cold-warm periods and Looy and his colleagues believe that knowing exactly which plant species have evolved or died may help pr edict what might happen in the near future, the current pace of global warming accelerates. This is now forecast to be valuable in many ways Looy said. This may affect the future of agricultural policy in the preparation of future warming and forest policy, timber cutting, for example. Even winemakers have a better chance to decide what to grow grapes as affected by the heating of agricultural crops, as influenced by other plant life in the past, Looy said. “I’m super happy with what gives us our cores,” he said.Doing Analysis
pubDate cores sent to the University of Minnesota is a cold storage facility or a state called LacCORE Lacrustine Core Facility. There Looy team members shared the central part, photographed in half and put half on each piece back to the Berkeley faculty and students to analyze in detail.
the details are very good indeed, drilled every half inch of sediment represents 10 years earlier. Although Anthony Barnosky, UC paleontologist and his team is poring over a half dozen animal fossils from caves in the Clear Lake area, the Berkeley Museum of Paleontology is stored. Tens of thousands more fossils are collected from around the world are also stored there, and they can also reveal how past climate changes have played a role in the development and extinction of wildlife. “We work with all the mammoths of the past and move the mouse to paint a picture of the future, we have not seen,” Barnosky said.This article is the second page – 1 San Francisco Chronicle
No comments:
Post a Comment