FY 2009
The primary goals for the USGS group during FY09 are to facilitate model groups interested in the Pliocene Model Intercomparison Project (PlioMIP) project while expanding the USGS SST and Land Cover data sets:
- Revised Sea Surface Temperature (& Sea Ice): Analyze additional material from Pacific Ocean for a new multiproxy Pacific Ocean surface reconstruction. This includes sites from the western low latitude Pacific and high northern latitudes. Information from upwelling zones off the US west coast and the west coast of South America will be integrated for this reconstruction.
- Begin a new effort in the Indian Ocean at four new sites as part of a collaboration with Columbia University to look at the Indian Ocean Dipole as well as other features during the mid-Piacenzian Age of the Pliocene Epoch.
- Analysis of a large number of samples from the Pacific and Indian Oceans as part of a data-model comparison with Columbia University. Work will continue on our high latitude North Atlantic and Southern Ocean efforts.
- Revised Land Surface Cover (& Land Ice): Analyze and incorporate the BAS land cover scheme into PRISM as a supplementary or alternative data set. Begin assessment of existing USGS vegetation data and analysis of data from new locations as part of the new USGS Biome vegetation reconstruction. This is the beginning of a multi-year effort to revise the PRISM2 vegetation reconstruction.
- Enhance web site and turn all previous and current PRISM reconstructions into both spreadsheet and NetCDF formatted files. Produce applications that allow for a global (spatial) view of materials and chronologies that went into PRISM2 and PRISM3 reconstructions.
- Regional science products as part of PMIP2 initialization and validation work.
- Several smaller initiatives that have developed from our ongoing work will be pursued.
U.S. Department of the Interior |
U.S. Geological Survey