Using oxygen-17 of lake gastropods as a novel tracer of palaeohydrological change

Water in lakes has a certain triple oxygen isotopic composition depending on the amount of precipitation and evaporation. Snails use oxygen from lake waters in order to mineralise their shells, thereby locking in the isotopic composition so that when snails die, they accumulate in sediments and can be analysed in order to build a record of climate change through time. We will test this new isotopic method in the modern day, by analysing snail shells collected along a climatological gradient from the northwest to the southwest of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.

The Lowland Maya living in central America over the past 3,000 years were affected by climate change, and are hypothesised to have declined as a result of a series of droughts. We will analyse the snail shells from a lake core and by determining how wet or dry it was in the past we will be able to determine how they responded to climate change. This knowledge could have profound implications for society, given that we are inhabitants of a warming planet.

Faculty Supervisor:

Peter Douglas

Student:

Partner:

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Discipline:

Earth science

Sector:

Environmental Science and Technology; Water; Sustainability & the Environment

University:

McGill University

Program: