JAMES C. ZACHOS Professor of Earth & Planetary Sciences Paloeoceanography, Paleoclimatology, Marine Stratigraphy
		Office: EMS A260 Phone: 831-459-4644 Fax: 831-459-3074 E-mail: jzachos@es.ucsc.edu Lab: D218 x9-5088, C514 x9-5751		For more information: • Website • Publications

Education and Training

B.S., State University of New York, Oneonta
M.S., University of South Carolina, Columbia
Ph.D., Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island
Post Doctoral Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Research Interests

Jim Zachos's research interests  encompass a wide variety of problems related to the climatic, chemical and biological evolution of late Cretaceous and Cenozoic oceans. He is a paleoceanographer   who measures the chemical compositions of fossils to reconstruct various features of past climates including marine temperatures, circulation patterns, and continental ice-volume, as well as ocean carbon  chemistry. His research is oriented toward identifying  the mechanisms responsible for driving long and short-term changes in global  climate, and impacts of abrupt climate change on ecosystems.

Zachos and his students are currently participating in several projects directed towards understanding the nature of rapid and extreme climate transitions in earth history.  These projects largely involve the analysis of stable isotopes and trace metal ratios in marine microfossils and other aspects of sediment chemistry as a means of reconstructing past climatic conditions and ocean chemistry during episodes of Cenozoic greenhouse warming including the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (~55 mya), ELMO, the middle and early Eocene Climatic Optimums (~53, 48 & 52 Mya respectively).  Zachos and his students are also investigating marine cores to determine the approximate timing and extent of continental glaciations during the late Eocene to middle Miocene, from 15 to 40 million years ago. The goal of this work is to establish the timing of these glaciations relative to periodic changes in Earth's orbit.

Zachos is a co-director of the UCSC Stable Isotope Laboratory which is housed in the Earth and Marine Sciences Building.  He is currently a member of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Researh (CIAR), Earth System Evolution Program.  He is a former director of the Center for Dynamics and Evolution of the Land-Sea Interface (CDELSI). He is also a co-PI of a multi-institution  project focused on the Biocomplexity of the Paleocene-Eocene Boundary (BIOPE).

Teaching Interests

Oceanography  |  Stable Isotope Geochemistry  |  Advanced Marine Stratigraphy  |  Current Research Topics in Paleocenaography and Paleoclimatology