{"id":183,"date":"2021-02-22T17:51:07","date_gmt":"2021-02-22T17:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/insidecrane.utoronto.ca\/?p=183"},"modified":"2021-02-22T17:51:09","modified_gmt":"2021-02-22T17:51:09","slug":"the-13c-stable-isotopes-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/insidecrane.utoronto.ca\/?p=183","title":{"rendered":"The 13C Stable Isotopes Project"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The 13C Stable Isotopes Project, undertaken starting in 2020 by CRANE’s institutional partner at Cornell University, is an ambitious attempt to look at changes in the ratio of stable carbon-13 to carbon-12 isotopes, and use them to understand climate in eras before modern climate records. \u201cIf somebody had written down meteorological records every day, we wouldn’t need to do this,\u201d says Sturt Manning<\/a>, Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences in Classics at Cornell University, and Director of the Cornell Tree Ring Laboratory<\/a>, who co-supervises the project with Cornell Research Associate Brita Lorentzen<\/a>. Since such records did not exist during CRANE\u2019s period and area of interest, the next best thing is what Manning calls \u201cenvironmental or natural archives\u201d \u2013 the climate information written into nature, and especially into the annual growth rings of trees, since they can be dated precisely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Phoenician juniper (Juniperus phoenicea<\/em>) sample, heartwood-sapwood boundary and outer rings, from historic structure at Taybet Zaman in southern Jordan close to Petra (Courtesy of Prof. Sturt Manning). <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The C-13\nproject builds on the work that has already been done at Cornell\u2019s Tree Ring\nLaboratory to build up tree ring records from the CRANE region and periods of\ninterest: \u201cWe\u2019ve built a new 600-year record from a site in Northern Syria and\nother records from the east Mediterranean-Levant region,\u201d Manning says, \u201cso\nit’s because we have some of these records from the Bronze Age period that, now\nwe can do this.\u201d Beginning with the period lasting roughly 1450 to 750 BC,\nManning and his colleagues are taking wood samples from archeological sites and\nexamining the ratio of carbon isotopes within them, to find clues about what\nwas going on in climate at the time. \u201cIf a plant is growing somewhere, and the\nclimate changes to become more arid, for example,\u201d Manning says, \u201cthat’s going\nto leave slight changes in the ratio of the carbon isotopes you will find in\nthe plant.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the\nCOVID-19 pandemic ends and access to laboratories becomes less limited, the\nproject will engage graduate and undergraduate students at Cornell and move\nahead with more processing and measurements. With their help, the project will\nbe able to collect the replicate data that are necessary to ensure a robust\nrecord and likely climate history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Graduate student Liam McDonald working on tree-ring sample, Cornell Tree Ring Laboratory (Courtesy of Prof. Sturt Manning). <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By building these detailed \u201cproxy\u201d climate records, it may become possible to get a better idea of how changes in climate correlate with changes in human civilization. Manning says that there have always been hypotheses for the rise and fall of civilizations: \u201cOften you blame invaders, or migration, and then there was a move to start blaming sources like climate, or extraterrestrial impacts.\u201d With the C-13 project\u2019s high-resolution records, it will be possible to say definitively that some hypotheses don\u2019t work, \u201cand we can see if climate change is, or is not, a likely driver in some key cases.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written by Jaime Weinman<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 13C Stable Isotopes Project, undertaken starting in 2020 by CRANE’s institutional partner at Cornell University, is an ambitious attempt to look at changes in the ratio of stable carbon-13 to carbon-12 isotopes, and use them to understand climate in eras before modern climate records. \u201cIf somebody had written down meteorological records every day, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":184,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-183","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insidecrane.utoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insidecrane.utoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insidecrane.utoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insidecrane.utoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insidecrane.utoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=183"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/insidecrane.utoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":188,"href":"https:\/\/insidecrane.utoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions\/188"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insidecrane.utoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insidecrane.utoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insidecrane.utoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insidecrane.utoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}