QRC members lead and participate in a wide range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary research projects from the study of past earth climates and glaciations to shifts in the geographic distributions and evolution of vegetation and faunal communities, to the evolution and dispersals of the genus Homo and the increasing scales of human modification of earth environments through the Holocene. QRC provides a venue for meeting and collaborating with scholars across Quaternary disciplines. We are also fortunate to be able to provide seed funding and small grants for member research projects. We are especially happy to support grad student and junior scholar research activities, much of which leads to larger, external funding from agencies like the National Science Foundation.
Constraining Astoria Canyon’s distal depocenter: Discovering the balance of gradual and episodic accumulation along WA’s outer slope
Abstract: Marine sedimentary deposits along the Cascadia margin have long been a source for insight into historical events and processes including: seismic recurrence; floods, storms and other oceanographic processes; and geochemical exchanges in the Pacific Northwest. This history is accessed through sediment core collection and analysis (210Pb geochronology, grain size analysis, imaging, tracers). Prior studies have implemented these methods over segments of the Washington Margin, but gaps in core coverage preclude a comprehensive view of the margin. Recent core data collected from upper Astoria Canyon have proven that modern hydrodynamics are capable of flushing sediment to depths far greater than initially anticipated, but this study was not able to constrain the depth of the canyon depocenter. These dual factors have spurred new interest in a coring survey over this coverage gap with two goals:
core sites within Astoria Canyon will define the down-canyon extent of modern sediment deposition, and
cores within and surrounding the canyon allow for the creation of an accurately interpolated map of sediment accumulation throughout northern Cascadia.
The proposed field effort will collect a series of box and kasten cores from Astoria Canyon and the surrounding slope, and analyze them for 210Pb geochronology, grain size, and stratigraphic analysis through computed tomography. The results from this proposed effort will contribute a more refined knowledge of both local canyon sediment depositional processes, and margin-wide accumulation.
Abstract: Marine sedimentary deposits along the Cascadia margin have long been a source for insight into historical events and processes including: seismic recurrence; floods, storms and other oceanographic processes; and geochemical exchanges in the Pacific Northwest. This history is accessed through sediment core collection and analysis (210Pb geochronology, grain size analysis, imaging, tracers). Prior studies have implemented these methods over segments of the Washington Margin, but gaps in core coverage preclude a comprehensive view of the margin. Recent core data collected from upper Astoria Canyon have proven that modern hydrodynamics are capable of flushing sediment to depths far greater than initially anticipated, but this study was not able to constrain the depth of the canyon depocenter. These dual factors have spurred new interest in a coring survey over this coverage gap with two goals: