EXAMINING THE LATE-QUATERNARY PALEOCLIMATE RECORD IN A SEDIMENT CORE FROM TULARE LAKE, CALIFORNIA: RESEARCH PARTICIPATION OPPORTUNITIES FOR HIGH SCHOOL AND COLLEGE STUDENTS AND K-12 TEACHERS

In summer 2005, a 15 m core was collected from the west side of the Tulare Lake basin near Kettleman City, CA. It was acquired through a project funded by the NSF Opportunities for Enhancing Diversity in the Geosciences program. The core was the basis for summer research participation programs in which high school students and K-12 teachers worked with geology faculty and students from CSU Bakersfield. Sediment core analysis is an ideal project for a team with widely different backgrounds and skills because it has tasks that range from simple like grain-size and color description, to highly technical such as micropaleontology. The core was analyzed for grain size, magnetic susceptibility, organic/inorganic carbon, paleoecology based on ostracodes and pollen. A diatom analysis is currently ongoing.

Radiocarbon dating suggests that the sediments in the core were deposited over the past 60,000 years. Pollen analysis suggests that the late Pleistocene is characterized by species that indicate semi-arid woodland and high productivity. The early/mid Holocene is characterized by salt marsh indicators. The late Holocene is characterized by species that suggest high productivity and drying of the marshes during the summer. By contrast, ostracodes were not a clear indicator of environmental change except at specific intervals centered around 740 cm and 1360-1420 cm.

This NSF-funded project has multiple lasting impacts. The successful research participation model developed with the grant was instrumental in obtaining and implementing a major donation from Chevron to continue the project and expand it to other science disciplines. The summer 2011 programs were the 5^th year with Chevron support and were funded with $400,000. A total of 89 high school students and 25 teachers participated in projects with faculty and students from all science departments. The work on the core during the Chevron-funded phase of study established that proxy indicators of lake level are present in Tulare Lake sediments. This is the basis for one of two strategies proposed in a pending proposal to the NSF CREST program to employ to recover and test high-resolution lake-level records and, hence, paleo-runoff records of the four major rivers feeding the lake, a proposal that may sustain funding for up to ten years.