|
|
| Name |
Boyle, Edward A. |
| Location
|
Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Primary Field
|
Geology |
 Election Citation
|
|
Boyle has demonstrated that diverse trace elements in marine sediments provide information about ancient oceanic processes and Earth history. His findings are fundamental to determining how the circulation and biological productivity of the ocean have changed over time. He has developed techniques with exquisite sensitivity and precision that have opened productive lines of investigation into the geological history of the ocean. |
|
Research Interests
|
|
My studies in marine geochemistry focus on ocean trace metal chemistry in relation to biogeochemical cycling, anthropogenic inputs, and as a tool for understanding the geological history of the ocean. I obtained some of the first valid data for several trace metals in the ocean (a field that had been plagued for decades by sample contamination and analytical problems). For the past 25 years, I have been tracking the evolution of the anthropogenic Pb transient in the ocean, from its first perceptible rise in the middle of the 19th century (based on sediment and annually-banded coral records) through the decrease due to the phasing out of leaded gasoline. I have also worked on Pb and other anthropogenic trace metals in Greenland ice cores and estuaries. I have discovered that Fe in the deep southwest Pacific derives from distant hydrothermal vents. I have shown that Cd in some species of benthic foraminifera tracks the Cd content of the bottom water they grow in, and have applied this finding to sediment cores to trace past changes in ocean deepwater chemistry which are influenced by changing ocean circulation patterns and changes in biogeochemical cycling within the ocean, including mechanisms that influence atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. I was the first to observe a predicted response of deep AtlanticOcean chemistry to abrupt climate change during the Younger Dryas event 12,900 years ago. |
|
|
|