ST. PETERSBURG, FL - Ryan Venturelli, a Ph.D. student working with Dr. Brad Rosenheim, will receive a 2018 Graduate Student Research Grant from the Geological Society of America for her research project entitled, “Deconvolving Holocene Hydrologic Variability Along the Florida Keys Reef Tract.”
This research involves the application of coral clumped isotopes to understand changes in temperature, seawater isotopic composition, and salinity along the Florida Keys Reef Tract throughout the last 11,000 years. This information, along with a recently published radiocarbon record from the same corals, will be used to gain an improved understanding of Holocene hydrologic/oceanographic variability in the Straits of Florida, a region that provides an important link between the tropical and high-latitude Atlantic Ocean.