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.
