【Institution】: CAS Institute for Earth Environment, Xi'an, China 

【Host】: Pinghe Cai   【Contact】: Jingyan Chen

Speaker: Dr. GEORGE S. BURR

October 2015 to present (3 months/year),  Acting Vice Director - Xi'an Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory, CAS Institute for Earth Environment, Xi'an, China

1993 Ph.D., University of Chicago

George Burr: 
Research Scientist at the Xi'an AMS Facility, Institute for Earth Environment, Xi'an, China. Visiting Professor at National Sun Yat-sen University, Department of Oceanography, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Dr. Burr received his Ph.D. in Geophysical Sciences from the University of Chicago (1993). He has served as an Associate Editor for the Journal Radiocarbon since 1999 and a Fulbright Scholar (2006-2007). Dr. Burr is a specialist in Geoscience and Archaeological applications of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry using ¹⁴C, ¹⁰Be and ¹²⁹I.

Abstract:

¹²⁹I is an anthropogenic isotope currently produced during nuclear fuels reprocessing, and formerly during above-ground nuclear testing. ¹²⁹I is concentrated in the marine environment with known point sources in Europe. Since about 1990 the amount of ¹²⁹I is surface waters of the world oceans has increased by more than two orders of magnitude. This influx of ¹²⁹I has been widely studied in a variety of marine archives, including seawater, seaweed and corals. This talk will review studies using ¹²⁹I as a marine tracer and will focus on coral records from the South China Sea. These record the first influx of anthropogenic ¹²⁹I in the 1950s and early 1960s.