Description of the Project
How large-scale volcanism cascades into greenhouse-icehouse cycles and impacts sea level, species richness of marine organisms as well as terrestrial biologic systems and hence the entire global carbon cycle is the core question of this multidisciplinary project. Integration of a series of environmental parameters into an atmosphere-ocean coupled General Circulation Model (GCM) will provide a crucial test for the respective role of each abiotic parameter and its impact and feedback on other parameters of the model. The project will be developed along the following topics: 1) Determination of marine biochronology, absolute timing through high-precision U/Pb geochronology, as well as reconstruction of Pangean paleogeography; 2) reconstruction of the parameters of environmental change using elemental as well as stable and radiogenic isotope proxies; 3) reconstruct the C cycle disturbances using a GCM and simple box models, and 4) study the the evolutionary responses of nekton and benthos.
