Florida Tech Hosts Distinguished Lecturer to Discuss Global Sea-Level Change, Sept. 22

MELBOURNE, FLA.—Sponsored by the Florida Institute of Technology’s student chapter of The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, the Florida Tech Institute for Research on Global Climate Change will host distinguished lecturer Craig Fulthorpe. As part of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership’s U.S. Science Support Program Distinguished Lecturer Series, Fulthorpe will discuss “Deciphering the Long-Term History of Global Sea-Level Change.” The talk will be on campus at the Olin Life Sciences Auditorium, Room 130, at 7 p.m.

In order to predict future changes in global sea level and shoreline location, it is vital to constrain the range of past variability. According to Fulthorpe, one way to do this is to investigate the thick sediment accumulations beneath continental shelves and slopes through scientific ocean drilling of globally coordinated borehole transects across continental margins. He will share information that continuous coring provides on sediment ages, depositional environment and paleowater depths during multiple sea-level cycles spanning millions of years.

Fulthorpe is a senior research scientist at the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas at Austin. As a graduate student in 1985, he became part of the first scientific expedition organized by the Ocean Drilling Program, now known as Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP). The first expedition was designed to study the origin and evolution of the Bahamas carbonate platform. Fulthorpe has since been a part of four such projects, the latest as a co-chief scientist on an IODP drilling of the Canterbury Basin off the eastern coast of New Zealand’s South Island.

The Distinguished Lecturer Series brings IODP research discoveries to students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Since 1991, more than 250 presentations have been made through the program in colleges, universities and organizations. Acting on behalf of the Florida Tech Climate Institute, Steven Lazarus, Florida Tech associate professor, Department of Marine and Environmental Science, was instrumental in bringing Fulthorpe to Florida Tech.

For more information about the event, contact Stevie Pursell at (321) 674-7202, or email spursell@fit.edu.