Testing New Methods to Assess the Environmental and Floral/Faunal responses to Impacts on Earth

The loess/loessoid sequences of Buenos Aires province of Argentina span the last 10-12 Myrs. The sequences contain an unprecedented meteorite impact record as well as abundant fossil assemblages. The potential for these sequences to archive geologic, biologic and climatologic changes in a terrestrial environment is immense. In addition, understanding these changes in the context of meteorite impact events and their local and/or regional environmental effects can significantly improve our understanding of impact processes and their effect on our surroundings. Prior and on going work (funded through an NASA EPSCoR-RID award) has helped to develop environmental magnetic and organic geochemical proxies that can be used to characterize these loess sequences. The study proposed here, however, will use these new environmental proxies to test their use to characterize the environmental conditions before, during, and after one specific impact during the mid-Pliocene in Argentina (3.3Ma) near Mar del Plata. This event occurred nearly coincident with a major faunal turnover when 37% of all genera and 53% of all endemic species became extinct. This period of time is of great interest because it was during the mid-Pliocene Warm Period Optimum (period of global warmth ~2.9-3.3 Ma often used as an analog for future climate change. Hence this proposed effort will address the following questions: (a) Can the multi-proxy (organic geochemical and environmental magnetic) methods developed and used successfully in more recent sediments provide equivalent results from older loess/loessoid sediments in Argentina? (b) What are the paleoenvironmental and biological consequences for the Mar del Plata meteorite impact recorded in the loess/loessoid sequence at Chapadmalal? (c) And was the mid-Pliocene faunal turnover impact-related or climate-related? Specifically, we propose to acquire two shallow drill/cores (40m) across this period in a know section of Argentina near Mar del Plata as well as recover more limited sampling across the impact horizon in selected outcrops. This period of time is also of great interest because it was during the mid-Pliocene Warm Period Optimum (period of global warmth ~2.9-3.3 Ma often used as an analog for future climate change. Our study will provide a case study of how one impact event can affect the local and/or regional environments and the aspects of life and ecology in those environments. If successful, then these results can be applied to other important transitions in environmental conditions. This effort directly addresses EPSCoR objectives by continuing and strengthening the collaborative research between jurisdiction universities (University of Rhode Island and Brown University), demonstrating the use of a new tracer of the biologic response to an impact, providing the opportunity to involve graduate and undergraduate students in an international, multidisciplinary research program, and creating and enhancing other funding opportunities (e.g., National Science Foundation, NASA Exobiology).

This is a mature technology (TRL 7+) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.