Published: 12.05.08

Dr David Nash has been awarded a prestigious grant by the National Geographic Society to investigate environmental changes in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile during the last glacial period.

The Atacama is one of the oldest deserts in the world and is widely regarded as the driest and least hospitable place on Earth. Despite this, there is evidence from a number of inland sites for wetter conditions on occasions during the Late Quaternary. Between 14,000 and 9,500 years ago, for example, lake and groundwater levels were higher in the central Atacama and humans occupied ancient lake sites across the Andean Altiplano. In contrast, we know very little about past climates along the Pacific coast of the desert.

Dr Nash will be working with colleagues Dr Joanna Bullard (Loughborough University) and Dr Mark Bateman (University of Sheffield) investigating the record of environmental changes preserved within aeolianite deposits (chemically cemented wind-blown dune sediments) near Iquique and to the west of Copiapó. Analyses of aolianite are of considerable geographical significance as they can provide insights into past changes in wind regime, moisture availability and, where found in near-coastal settings, marine-onshore sediment fluxes.

The team will spend around one month in Chile, describing and logging aeolianite outcrops to ascertain variations in past wind direction. The deposits will also be systematically sampled for optically-stimulated luminescence dating and laboratory analyses which will be carried out in Brighton and Sheffield.

This will be the first time that aeolianite deposits have been studied in South America and should reveal fascinating insights into the timing of dune sedimentation in the Atacama in relation to published climatic and sea level records.