Climate, Water, Life, and Rock: Paleoclimate and Geobiology from Kiritimati Lake Sediments
The coral atoll of Kiritimati in the central tropical Pacific contains hundreds of brackish to hypersaline lakes that are a window into past hydroclimatic variability in the region. These lakes and their sediments are also valuable archives that can be used to explore fundamental geobiological questions. In this talk Conroy will discuss her group’s research on these lakes in three vignettes, including 1) how remotely-sensed lake surface area responds to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, 2) the record of last millennium hydroclimate on Kiritimati using lacustrine sedimentology, stable isotope geochemistry, and organic biomarkers, and 3) insights into carbon and nitrogen cycling developed from pairing metagenomic and stable isotope data in lake sediment cores.
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