Post-doctoral work

Paleontological Research Institution	Ithaca New York
Institute of Marine Sciences	UC, Santa Cruz

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Curriculum Vitae

CURRENT PROJECTS

• Measuring color reflectance in Silurian rock cores: are variations climatically forced?

• Holocene climate in Finger Lakes sediments: diatom assemblages and magnetic proxies

• Evolutionary ecology of the Menardella clade in the Pliocene

• Changes in the Gulf Stream during the MISs 11 and 12

• Variations in the strength and position of the North Atlantic Drift in the Holocene and Pliocene

I have been primarily interested in the tropical planktonic foraminifera of the Neogene in the Atlantic and Pacific basins. My over-arching objective is to reconstruct surface circulation through the Neogene based on the response of the planktonic foraminifera assemblages to environmental evolution forced by changes in boundary conditions. 

The ecology of these organisms is sensitive to changes in temperature stratification and productivity in the photic zone. Tectonic events (e.g., seaway closings) and climatic fluctuations (e.g., forced by periodic changes in insolation) cause changes in windfield position and strength and can re-route circulation patterns of surface currents. 

All of these physical environmental variations induce changes in the composition of the planktonic assemblages (detectable by census counting) and affect the depth ecology of many species (detectable by stable isotopic analysis of foraminifer shells).

Recently I have been applying some the techniques used in deep-sea drilling (measuring color reflectance and the assumption of Milankovitch forcing of climate) in Paleozoic rock cores from the Grand Island-Lewiston area, north of Niagara Falls.  This project is being done in conjunction with Jon Arney and his students at RIT.

In addition, Mary Arnold, a diatom expert recently graduated from the master's program in biology at SUNY Brockport, has been making the necessary contacts with state and regional authorities and getting us out onto Conesus, Hemlock and Canadice Lakes to collect gravity cores.  We hope to document changes in the paleoproductivity of these lakes through the Holocene.