Home , Go Back to faculty page EMI ITO Professor and Director, Limnological Research Center PhD, 1979, University of Chicago Research Group Web Site: Limnological Research Center Office: 208B Pillsbury Hall Phone: (612) 624-7881 Fax: (612) 625-3819 Email: eito@...

        My current research is centered on the reconstruction of past climate (especially moisture balance) using mainly stable isotope and trace element composition of inorganically formed and biogenic carbonates. Some research projects are aimed toward gaining a better understanding of processes that "connect" climate to proxy records of climate (such as inorganic carbonates precipitated in lake epilimnion or ostracode calcite shells) preserved in lake sediments. For example, groundwater may have a significant effect on a lake's hydrological and hydrochemical budget and thus influence the geochemical signature of carbonates formed within the lake. The habitat and the timing of the moulting of ostracodes also affect the geochemistry of the shells. Other research projects combine these process-oriented studies with climate reconstruction based on sediment cores collected from climatically sensitive sites. I like to work collaboratively with other researchers who are experts on hydrogeology, regional climate modeling, diatoms, ostracodes, or pollen so that we, as a group, have several lines of evidence to reconstruct climatic conditions, and I strongly encourage my students to take an equally broad perspective.

        My students and I currently work on several sites in the northern Great Plains all in North Dakota, one near Williston, another near Minot, and yet another near Jamestown, one site in Montana (Ovando Valley), a site in Minnesota (Crow Wing Watershed), and are developing projects in Uruguay and in western Mongolia. The Ovando Valley sites are being studied by Mark Shapley. His work includes both the study of the effect of groundwater in the modern system and the study of sediment core. We are collaborating with Joe Donovan, a hydrogeologist at the University of West Virginia on this project. The Jamestown site is being studied by Rebecca Clotts. She is investigating the relationship between the water and ostracode shell chemistry by looking into ostracode life histories (especially the timing of the various moults) and habitat preference in the context of known hydrologic gradients in a complex of groundwater-connected wetlands. Her study involves biweekly sampling of water and ostracodes from over a dozen locations in the wetland complex. We are collaborating with and being assisted by researchers at USGS in Denver and the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center, Jamestown, on this project. The Crow Wing project involves a hydrogeologist, a mesoscale climate modeler, and several people including Herb Wright and Victor Zabielski from Minnesota. The study aims to investigate the effect of aquifers in paleoclimate reconstruction of glaciated watersheds. The Minnesota crew is tracking the changes in the chemistry of water from two lakes and nearby monitoring wells and studying the sediment cores from the same two lakes. The former will help elucidate the relationship between climate, lake water, and the location of the lake within the watershed and the data will be incorporated into the mesoscale climate model. The latter will provide the ground truth for the modeled climate. The decadally resolved sediment studies conducted thus far have shown that in the last 2000 years the northern Great Plains have experienced lengthy droughts recurring every 400 years. The regionÕs normal climate condition appears to be that of moderate to strong negative moisture balance punctuated by brief periods of moderate aridity such as we enjoy now.
 

Professional Society Memberships

• American Geophysical Union
• Geochemical Society
• American Meteorological Society
• American Quaternary Association
• American Society of Limnology and Oceanography

• Dynamic Earth: An Intro to Geology
• Earth System: Geosphere-Biosphere Interactions
• Climate Change and Human History
• Isotope Geology

• Juanjuan Xia, PhD, 1996 (co-advised w/Engstrom) Stable-isotope and trace-element composition of ostracode shells and their application to paleoclimatic reconstruction in the northern Great Plains.
• Mark D Shapley, PhD, 2005

• Shapley MD, Ito E, and Donovan JJ, (2005) Endogenic Calcium Carbonate Flux in Groundwater-Controlled Lakes: Implications for Lacustrine Paleoclimate Records. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, 69:2517-2533.
• Mickler PJ, Banner JL, Stern L, Asmerom Y, R. Edwards RL and Ito E (2004) Stable isotope variations in modern tropical speleothems: Evaluating equilibrium vs. kinetic isotope effects. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. 68: 4381-4393.
• Ito E, De Deckker P and Eggins SM (2003) Ostracodes and their shell chemistry: Implications for paleohydrologic and paleoclimatologic applications. In Bridging the Gap: Trends in the Ostracode Biological and Geological Sciences (eds Park, LE and Smith AJ), The Paleontological Society Papers, 9:119-151.
• Ito E, Stern RJ and Douthit C (2003) Insights into operation of the “subduction factory” from the oxygen-isotopic values of southern Izu-Bonin-Mariana arc. The Island Arc, 12:383-397.
• Filby SK, Locke SM, Person MA, Winter TC, Rosenberry DO, Nieber JL, Gutowski WJ, Ito E (2002) Mid-Holocene hydrologic model of the Shingobee watershed, Minnesota. Quaternary Research, 58:246-254.
• Yu Zicheng, Ito E, Engstrom DR and Fritz, SC (2002) A 2100-year decadal resolution trace-element and stable-isotope record from Rice Lake in the glaciated Great Plains. The Holocene. 12:605-617.
• Yu ZC, Ito E, and Engstrom DR(2002) Water isotopic and hydrochemical evolution of chain lakes in the glaciated Great Plains and its paleoclimatic implications. Journal of Paleolimnology. 28:207-217.
• Ito E (2002) Mg/Ca, Sr/Ca, δ¹⁸O and δ¹³C Chemistry of Quaternary Lacustrine Ostracode Shells from the North American Continental Interior. In The Ostracoda: Applications in Quaternary Research (eds.Holmes JT and Chivas AR), Geophysical Monograph Series Volume 131, 267-278. American Geophysical Union.
• Danielopol DL, Ito E ,Wansard G, Kamiya T, Cronin TM, and Baltanas A. (2002) Techniques for the Collection and Study of Ostracoda. In The Ostracoda: Applications in Quaternary Research (eds.Holmes JT and Chivas AR), Geophysical Monograph Series Volume 131, 65-97. American Geophysical Union.
• Maurice PA, Cabaniss SE, Drummond J and Ito E (2002) Hydrogeochemical controls on the variations in chemical characteristics of natural organic matter at a small freshwater wetland. Chemical Geology 187:59-77.

• 2003-2006 Support of the CoreLab at the Limnological Research Center (Ito and Schnurrenberger) NSF-ATM
• 2003-2005 REU Continuation of Fluids in the Earth from Surface to Core (Hirschmann and Ito) NSF-EAR
• 2003-2005 Acquisition of a multi-sensor core-logger in support of the multi-user LRC Core Facility (Ito and Schnurrenberger) NSF-EAR
• 2005-2007 Collaborative Research: Testing Potential of Paired Lakes on the NE Tibetan Plateau for Studying Interaction Between Hydrochemical Evolution and Environmental Change NSF-EAR
• 2005-2008 Collaborative Research: Lake Peten-Itza Drilling Project, Guatemala: A Terrestrial Archive of Northern Neotropical Climate and Environmental Change for the Last Climate Cycle NSF ESH
• 2005-2007 Facilities Support: National Lacustrine Core Repository and initial Core Analysis Laboratory (LacCore) (Ito and Shuman)NSF EAR