FESD - Amazon Andes Geogenomics
The key questions asked in this 5-year NSF Frontiers in Earth System Dynamics program are:
- Cenozoic Uplift History of the Tropical Andes, particularly the Western Cordillera
- Cenozoic Paleoclimate and Landscape Evolution in the Western Amazon Lowlands of Brazil and Peru
- Cenozoic Climate Dynamics via isotope-enabled ocean-atmosphere climate modeling of key time slices
- Molecular Genetics of Woody Plant Taxa, carefully chosen to test several fundamental hypotheses about the role of uplift and climate in generation of diversity
- Construction of an Over-arching Modeling Framework linking the evolution of Andean uplift and erosion, Amazon basin creation and infilling, climatic and hydrologic change, nutrient cycling and soil formation, to forest productivity, the generation of ecologic niches, and ultimately to the distribution, extinction, and origin of species.
ICDP/IODP Drilling Proposals
Workshops are on their way and have been held (Buzios, March 2013) to develop the drilling program for a series of continental drill cores spanning the Amazon from the forelands of the Andes to the marine offshore Amazon Fan to further develop the climate record of tropical South America during the Cenozoic.
Ciencias sem Fronteras (CAPES, Brazil)
Research on the paleoclimatic and paleooceanographic evolution of the equatorial margin of Brazil
Duke-Brazil Initiative & Global Brazil Humanities Laboratory
These projects frame in an ongoing effort to merge science and humanities with a particular focus on the emerging 21st century leading state that Brazil is at the present day and the interesting cultural mix it hosts.
