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Potential Sources of Error and Uncertainty in Radiocarbon Dates from North American Sites
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- Author(s) / Creator(s)
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Radiocarbon dating — the process of
finding the age of a material by using the
radioactive isotope carbon-14 — is an
important tool in observing and inferring
past ecological events and changes.
However, it is not without its uncertainties.
While contamination and poor treatment in
the lab can lead to larger errors, so can
mechanisms which convert the radiocarbon
age produced by the dating process into a
calendar age for scientists to use
accordingly. There are more correlations
between uncertainty and other factors —
such as age and depth — which we will
discuss in this paper.
In addition, we are using fossil
pollen sediment core data from the Neotoma
Paleoecology Database. Many of the fossil
pollen sediment cores taken were from lakes
all over North America. Not only did we use
the sediment core radiocarbon data, but we
also used the longitude and latitude of the
sites to map the area of their respective lakes
using Google Earth Pro. We then classified
the lakes as being small, medium, or large,
according to a framework used in this paper.
The dating process, along with the
lake areas, gives us an idea of when an
ecological event occurred using the
radiocarbon date produced and whether the
change was a local or a regional event using
the area of the lake. By connecting these two
parts, we gain a clearer sense of when and
where an ecological occurrence happened.
Also, by knowing the sizes of lakes,
we can evaluate the scale of ecological
change through space and time. Therefore,
ecological change can be better understood,
which would ultimately lead to improved
predictions of past changes in different
ecosystems across North America -
- Date created
- 2021-08-01
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- Type of Item
- Conference/Workshop Poster