Vrije Universiteit Brussel; Faculty of Sciences; Department of Geology; Isotope Geology and Evolution of the Paleoenvironments (GEOL), co-ordinator
Keppens, Edward
Abstract
For a good understanding of the climatic variations there is a dire lack of numerical data on the climatic evolution in the continental environment. The project aims at the use of dc and do of pedogenic carbonates and of speleothems as indicators of paleoclimate. do may provide information about the paleotemperature while dc contains information about the paleohumidity. We intend to contribute to (1) a better knowledge of the quantative relationship between the isotope signatures of terrestial carbonates (pedogenic concretions and speleothems) and environmental parameters, mainly airtemperature, amount of precipation, bioproductivity, composition of the vegetation, by research into present day processes and on historical deposits, and to (2) the extension of the dataset of Quaternary terrestial carbonates in different regions and checking with independent information on the paleoclimatic evolution (palynological, geomorphological, sedimentological, paleopedological, etc.) with a view to a better knowledge of the continental climatic evolution. Obviously, for the sake of a correlation with data from the marine record, we intend to have an optimal chronostratigrafic positioning of the studied sequences, using absolute dating of the speleothems.
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