We welcome contributed abstracts to our session at this year’s Fall AGU Meeting in San Francisco:
BO55: New insights and approaches for recent dating of peat and aquatic sediments *Session ID#: *12833 *Session Description:* Establishing chronologies of peats and sediments on a 102-year (recent) timescale is important for quantifying processes such as carbon sequestration, vertical accretion, and changes in contaminant loading in a range of wetland and aquatic ecosystems. Determining uncertainties in dating is key to achieving good estimates, yet, of the many approaches available (i.e.,137Cs, 210Pb, 14C wiggle-matching, fly ash, tephra, organic and inorganic pollutant time markers, 241Am, 207Bi, pollen, etc.), few routinely incorporate error analyses. For this session, we are interested in assessing uncertainties in recent dating methods and identifying conditions under which a particular technique works best, fails or has high uncertainties and why. We welcome papers emphasizing (1) new or adapted empirical models, which improve dating accuracy, (2) protocols for better quantifying uncertainties, (3) factors/processes that affect vertical profiles of radionuclide tracers, and/or (4) field studies in which unusual patterns have led to new insights in dating. *Primary Convener: Judith Z Drexler*, USGS California Water Science Center Sacramento, Sacramento, CA, United States *Conveners: Christopher Fuller*, USGS Western Regional Offices Menlo Park, Menlo Park, CA, United States and *Mark M Baskaran*, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, United States *Co-Organized with: Biogeosciences*, Hydrology, and Ocean Sciences https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm16/preliminaryview.cgi/Session12833 We look forward to seeing you there!
