Clara Blattler
University of Chicago, IL·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
About 2.3 billion years ago, oxygen first built up in Earth's atmosphere in what is called the Great Oxidation Event. This change reshaped how carbon and sulfur cycle among the oceans, rocks and air.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Chemistry
- Topics
Great Oxidation Event
Lomagundi-Jatuli Event
Paleoproterozoic
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2029
What they work on
- Test hypotheses about the size and meaning of the Great Oxidation Event and the Lomagundi-Jatuli Event, using Paleoproterozoic carbonate rocks drilled in Fennoscandia in 2007.
- Use a multi-proxy geochemical approach to screen carbonates for burial alteration, later-formed minerals and local artifacts, and produce more reliable global carbon-isotope and sulfur-isotope records.
- Build revised global biogeochemical models of Paleoproterozoic surface redox and oxygen production from the improved carbon and sulfur isotope reconstructions.
More about the research
The size of those changes is still uncertain. For example, researchers do not know how much organic carbon was buried or how large the ocean's sulfate pool became. The main reason is that the carbonate rocks used as records can be altered after they form. This project studies a unique set of Paleoproterozoic rocks from Fennoscandia, collected by an international drilling effort in 2007, to reconstruct how these linked cycles changed.
Why it matters
This is basic Earth science. It clarifies how the planet's carbon and sulfur cycles and oxygen production responded when the atmosphere first became oxygenated. More reliable isotope records and revised models could improve how geochemists read ancient carbonate rocks. They could also inform broader understanding of how Earth's surface environment and habitability evolved.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Eric Boyd
Montana State University, MT·Earth & Environmental Science
Conduct targeted experiments with microorganisms that oxidize pyrite at near-neutral pH to separate the individual steps of microbial pyrite oxidation.
Jena Johnson
University of Michigan, MI·Earth & Environmental Science
Precipitate the iron(II) silicate mineral greenalite at high pH in simulated ancient seawater and measure the resulting iron isotope fractionation and iron-to-manganese ratios.
David Dettman
University of Arizona, AZ·Earth & Environmental Science
Expand a prototype TILDAS system, an infrared laser instrument that identifies molecules by the light they absorb, by adding a new laser unit to measure oxygen-17 in CO2.
The school
University of Chicago: 39 labs on PI Pages, $681M a year on research, 457 research doctorates a year.
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