Clara BlättlerAssistant Professor

Research Focus:

isotope geochemistry, geological carbon cycle, paleoceanography

Email:

cblattler@uchicago.edu

Office:

Hinds 321

Biography

• joined the University of Chicago in 2018
• postdoctoral research fellow, Princeton
• DPhil, Oxford, Earth Sciences
• AB, Harvard, Earth and Planetary Sciences

Research Interests

My interests include (but are not limited to) sedimentary geochemistry, Earth history, the carbon cycle, paleoceanography, and paleoclimatology. I use geochemical tools to explore the interactions between the oceans, sediments, the rock cycle, and the climate system. My work involves samples of many different ages (Archean through Recent) and from a broad range of locations and environments, with a particular focus on the sedimentary archives of carbonates and evaporites.

Some active projects within my research group:

• carbonate diagenesis in the Permian Reef Complex (Guadalupe Mountains)
• Paleoproterozoic sedimentary records from Fennoscandia
• geochemical behavior of alkaline lake deposits (natural and experimental)
• lingulid brachiopods as archives of seawater chemistry

Selected Publications

Blättler, C.L., Hong, W.L., Kirsimäe, K., Higgins, J.A., Lepland, A., 2021. Small calcium isotope fractionation at slow precipitation rates in methane seep authigenic carbonates. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 298, 227–239. doi:10.1016/j.gca.2021.01.001.

Crockford, P.W., Kunzmann, M., Blättler, C.L., Kalderon-Asael, B., Murphy, J.G., Ahm, A.-S., Sharoni, S., Halverson, G.P., Planavsky, N.J., Halevy, I., Higgins, J.A., 2021. Reconstructing Neoproterozoic seawater chemistry from early diagenetic dolomite. Geology 49. doi:10.1130/G48213.1.

Blättler, C.L., Bergmann, K.D., Kah, L.C., Gómez-Pérez, I., Higgins, J.A, 2020. Constraints on Meso- to Neoproterozoic seawater from ancient evaporite deposits. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 532, 115951. doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2019.115951.

Blättler, C.L., Higgins, J.A., Swart, P.K., 2019. Advected glacial seawater preserved in the subsurface of the Maldives carbonate edifice. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 257, 80–95. doi:10.1016/j.gca.2019.04.030.

Blättler, C.L., Claire, M.W., Prave, A.R., Kirsimäe, K., Higgins, J.A., Medvedev, P.V., Romashkin, A.E., Rychanchik, D.V., Zerkle, A.L., Paiste, K., Kreitsmann, T., Millar, I.L., Hayles, J.A., Bao, H., Turchyn, A.V., Warke, M.R., Lepland, A., 2018. Two-billion-year-old evaporites capture Earth’s great oxidation. Science 360, 320–323. doi:10.1126/science.aar2687.