Emma Benedict received a research assistantship from the Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities (CURO) at UGA to continue her study of sediment samples collected as a part of the NSF supported Indian Summer Monsoon project. Victor Arraes (co-advised with Andrew Grundstein) joined the ECL in Fall 2021. Victor is working on a M.S. thesis centered on assessing: the influence of orography on daily, monthly and seasonal precipitation amounts on the Araripe Plateau in northeast Brazil; and links between precipitation and agricultural productivity in this region. A paper lead by Neha Kholia (Geology, Kumaun University), published in the Journal of Climate Change, describes the sedimentological and grain-size characteristics of sediment cores recovered from two lakes in Himachal Pradesh and the processes related to the transportation and deposition of the sediments. Preparation for fieldwork in the foothills of the northern Indian Himalaya are on-going. We will collect surface sediment from a suite of lakes spanning a 2500 m elevation range and recover Holocene length cores from selected lakes located in Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh together with collaborators from Kumaun University. These samples and cores will be used to: characterize centennial-scale variability in the Indian Summer Monsoon; and assess whether the widespread abandonment of Bronze Age settlements in the northern India corresponds hydroclimate variability during the late Holocene. Preparation for fieldwork in Great Basin National Park (GBNP) is also on-going. Together with collaborators from Sinclair College and the Ohio State University we will continue our dendroclimatological research on hydroclimate variability and wildfire in GBNP.
