Ente finanziatore: PNRA (Programma Nazionale di Ricerca in Antartide), Bando 2018 (PNRA18_00010)
Budget: 102 350 €.
Partners: Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale - OGS; Dipartimento di Matematica e Geoscienze (Università degli Studi di Trieste); Istituto di Scienze Polari - ISP, sede secondaria di Bologna (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - CNR); Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra dell'Ambiente e della Vita - DISTAV (Università di Genova).
Durata: marzo 2020 - marzo 2023
Polar regions are key areas for the regulation of climate; regulating the heat exchange between the oceans and the atmosphere and between the low and high latitudes, mainly throughout the formation and melting of terrestrial and sea ice. In the recent years, a conspicuous part of the scientific community has focused on the Antarctic climate variability of the last 2000 years (CLIVASH2k working group of PAGES) because this interval provides critical information about Earth's climate natural variability versus changes induced by human activities. Within the framework of Line A of the PNRA_2018 call, the EDISTHO (Edisto inlet DIatom laminations Sequences Through the Holocene) research team undertakes a multidiscliplinary approach on sedimentary, seismic and oceanographic existing data collected within the Edisto Inlet. Indeed, data collected in the framework of past PNRA projects (i.e. BAY 2004/4.10, HOLOFERNE 2013/A2.03, TRACERS 2016-A3.05, GLEVORS A4_16_00293) indicate that the Edisto Inlet preserves an expanded sedimentary record, which mainly consists of yearly to decennal diatom laminations. However, those projects had different scientific objectives from the detailed studies of diatom laminae proposed here. As such, the high-resolution analysis of those cores has never been attempted before partly because the detailed study of diatom laminae requires specific, complex and expensive techniques. We want to address our research to the detailed study of these records, not only studying the laminae sequences, but also investigating the oceanographic and geomorphobathymetry condition that lead to the deposition of such an expanded record. Also sediment cores collected in the continental shelf basins will be analysed to distinguish local climatic signals in the Edisto Inlet from the regional ones.