See the campaign website: https://amaryllis.ipsl.fr
Leg 2 of the Amaryllis-Amagas campaign took place from 12 June to 3 July 2023 aboard the French vessel Marion Dufresne 2.
Its aim is to study the major role played by the Amazon region in the Earth’s climate system. Its role as a carbon sink depends on processes that are still poorly understood, such as the intensity and distribution of continental precipitation and the fertilisation of soils by Saharan dust. New information on these processes will be obtained from sediment cores deposited along the equatorial margin of South America, in the Amazonian regions and north-east Brazil.
Leg 2 of the campaign has two main objectives:
– To reconstruct the past climatic history (precipitation, vegetation) of the Amazon basin and north-eastern Brazil, on various time scales from the last million years.
– Assessing the contribution of Saharan mineral dust deposited in this region over the past and present million years, in particular its role as a fertiliser for the Amazon rainforest.
A number of techniques have been used to meet this challenge:
– Atmospheric mineral dust sampling
– Measurement and sampling of the water column
– Geophysical acquisition (bathymetry, surface sediment)
This international, multidisciplinary campaign involved 55 scientists from 7 French laboratories and 3 Brazilian universities. A major communication campaign was organised on board (see website).
LSCE contact: Aline Govin
(coordinator of the entire campaign and head of Leg 2)