Recollecting and Drilling Emerged Coral Reefs on the Huon   Peninsula, Papua New Guinea
{'Code': '06030101', 'Directorate': {'Abbreviation': 'GEO', 'LongName': 'Directorate For Geosciences'}, 'Division': {'Abbreviation': 'EAR', 'LongName': 'Division Of Earth Sciences'}}
{'SignBlockName': 'John A. Maccini'}
Reef terraces on the Huon Peninsula of Papua New Guinea were               the basis of a series of studies beginning in the early 1970's                  that gave impetus to the use of coral reefs to date ice ages.  The              tectonic uplift rate on the Huon Peninsula is so rapid (1 to 4                  mm/yr) that many of the lesser fluctuations of sea level within                 the last ice age are recorded by small, partly overlapping reefs.               This project represents major recollecting effort in collaboration              with Australian scientists and a group of international experts,                because few samples are now available from the Huon terraces.                   Also, drill cores through the youngest, Holocene, reef and a                    selected set of older reefs will define the rate and amplitude of               sea-level changes and climatic fluctuations during the last ice                 age.                                                                                 Newly developed analytical techniques of mass-spectrometric                Uranium-series dating and electron spin resonance (ESR) dating                  offer unprecedented precision and a longer time range for dating                emerged coral reefs on uplifting tropical coasts.  Unweathered,                 fresh coral samples are essential to both techniques.  Coral-reef               growth is closely controlled by sea-level fluctuations, which in                turn are governed by the expansion and shrinkage of continental                 ice sheets.  Thus, precise dates on corals from the Huon                        Peninsula, comparable to recently published mass-spectrometer                   Uranium-series ages in the range of 125,700 + 1200 years for                    corals from Barbados, will open a new era of precision for dating               ice ages and their concomitant changes in sea levels.  The new                  methods will permit a rigorous test of the Milankovitch theory of               ice ages and more accurate comparison with the deep-sea isotope                 record.
{'FirstName': 'Arthur', 'LastName': 'Bloom', 'EmailAddress': None, 'StartDate': '07/01/1988', 'EndDate': None, 'RoleCode': 'Principal Investigator'}
{'Name': 'Cornell University', 'CityName': 'Ithaca', 'ZipCode': '148502820', 'PhoneNumber': '6072555014', 'StreetAddress': '373 Pine Tree Road', 'CountryName': 'United States', 'StateName': 'New York', 'StateCode': 'NY'}
{'Code': '1571', 'Text': 'SCEC'}
{'url': 'https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/download?DownloadFileName=1988&All=true', 'xml': '8804970.xml'}