Tierra del Fuego Island: A natural laboratory for geological and paleoclimatic studies

EMANUELE LODOLO; MARCO MENICHETTI; ALEJANDRO TASSONE

Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica, Buenos Aires

Simposio; International Centre for Earth Sciences (ICES) 2; 2006

ICES-CNEA

The Tierra del Fuego Island, the southernmost limb of the South America continent, is a tectonically active region, being adjacent to several plate boundaries and cut by one, and is the only land mass directly in the core of the Southern Hemisphere globe-encircling westerly wind system, and immediately north of the Antarctic polar front.  The region is active from a geological point of view, and this provides an opportunity, because the relationship between regional tectonics and climate change is of fundamental importance in the Earth system processes. Terrestrial records from this key area can provide unique insight into mid- to high- latitude Southern Hemisphere paleoclimatology. This region recorded the glacial and interglacial history of southern South America and represents one of the best sites to reconstruct the late Quaternary climate change.