The impact of the end-Devonian mass extinction (the Hangenberg extinction) on tetrapods is not well understood. One issue is that we have very little knowledge of the Devonian tetrapod fauna that immediately preceded, and experienced, the mass extinction. New specimens from an early tetrapod bone bed of the latest Famennian, Stensiö Bjerg Formation of Celsius Bjerg, East Greenland have the potential to shed light on this problem. In this study, five new well-preserved specimens are presented: a partial skull, two humeri, a left pelvis, and a strange vertebral element. The specimens were imaged using propagation phase-contrast synchrotron microtomography (PPC-SRμCT), and then virtually segmented and rendered.  The partial skull and left pelvis share many similarities with Ichthyostega and Acanthostega, but also have some distinctive features. Notably, the epipterygoid does not articulate with the skull roof, the fenestra vestibuli appears to have an anterior lobe, the postorbital has a posteroventral process, and there is a sharp contrast between the rugose dermal ornament of the skull roof and the unornamented cheek. In addition, the partial skull is box-like in shape and has a laterally facing orbit, which are features seen in some Carboniferous tetrapods. Among other characters, the left pelvis has a differently curving posterior iliac process, and differently shaped ischium and anterior pubic margin compared to Ichthyostega and Acanthostega. The acetabulum of the left pelvis is also lacking a posterior notch, a feature seen in many other early tetrapods. The humeri presented in this thesis are curiously similar to the isolated tetrapod humerus from the Catskill Formation, Pennsylvania, USA known as ANSP 21350. In fact, they are more similar to each other and to ANSP 21350 than to any other early tetrapod humeri. This is in large part due to a distinctly distal supinator ridge which was previously only known from ANSP 21350. The mysterious vertebral element does not resemble any known early tetrapod bone due to its large, ventral, concave saddle-shaped projections. It consists of five fused vertebrae and is interpreted here to be a unique sacrum of an early tetrapod. The specimens described and interpreted in this study represent at least two new species, none of which can be assigned to known Devonian early tetrapods from Greenland. It is clear that a new and important faunal assemblage is emerging.

Recently, there is a tremendous amount of high resolution imagery that wasn’t available years ago, mainly because of the advancement of the technology in capturing such images. Most of the very high resolution (VHR) imagery comes in three bands only the red, green and blue (RGB), whereas, the importance of using such imagery in remote sensing studies has been only considered lately, despite that, there are no enough studies examining the usefulness of these imagery in urban applications. This research proposes a method to investigate high resolution imagery to analyse an urban area using UAV imagery for land use and land cover classification. Remote sensing imagery comes in various characteristics and format from different sources, most commonly from satellite and airborne platforms. Recently, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become a very good potential source to collect geographic data with new unique properties, most important asset is the VHR of spatiotemporal data structure. UAV systems are as a promising technology that will advance not only remote sensing but GIScience as well. UAVs imagery has been gaining popularity in the last decade for various remote sensing and GIS applications in general, and particularly in image analysis and classification. One of the concerns of UAV imagery is finding an optimal approach to classify UAV imagery which is usually hard to define, because many variables are involved in the process such as the properties of the image source and purpose of the classification. The main objective of this research is evaluating land use / land cover (LULC) classification for urban areas, whereas the data of the study area consists of VHR imagery of RGB bands collected by a basic, off-shelf and simple UAV. LULC classification was conducted by pixel and object-based approaches, where supervised algorithms were used for both approaches to classify the image. In pixel-based image analysis, three different algorithms were used to create a final classified map, where one algorithm was used in the object-based image analysis. The study also tested the effectiveness of object-based approach instead of pixel-based in order to minimize the difficulty in classifying mixed pixels in VHR imagery, while identifying all possible classes in the scene and maintain the high accuracy. Both approaches were applied to a UAV image with three spectral bands (red, green and blue), in addition to a DEM layer that was added later to the image as ancillary data. Previous studies of comparing pixel-based and object-based classification approaches claims that object-based had produced better results of classes for VHR imagery. Meanwhile several trade-offs are being made when selecting a classification approach that varies from different perspectives and factors such as time cost, trial and error, and subjectivity.       Classification based on pixels was approached in this study through supervised learning algorithms, where the classification process included all necessary steps such as selecting representative training samples and creating a spectral signature file. The process in object-based classification included segmenting the UAV’s imagery and creating class rules by using feature extraction. In addition, the incorporation of hue, saturation and intensity (IHS) colour domain and Principle Component Analysis (PCA) layers were tested to evaluate the ability of such method to produce better results of classes for simple UAVs imagery. These UAVs are usually equipped with only RGB colour sensors, where combining more derived colour bands such as IHS has been proven useful in prior studies for object-based image analysis (OBIA) of UAV’s imagery, however, incorporating the IHS domain and PCA layers in this research did not provide much better classes. For the pixel-based classification approach, it was found that Maximum Likelihood algorithm performs better for VHR of UAV imagery than the other two algorithms, the Minimum Distance and Mahalanobis Distance. The difference in the overall accuracy for all algorithms in the pixel-based approach was obvious, where the values for Maximum Likelihood, Minimum Distance and Mahalanobis Distance were respectively as 86%, 80% and 76%. The Average Precision (AP) measure was calculated to compare between the pixel and object-based approaches, the result was higher in the object-based approach when applied for the buildings class, the AP measure for object-based classification was 0.9621 and 0.9152 for pixel-based classification. The results revealed that pixel-based classification is still effective and can be applicable for UAV imagery, however, the object-based classification that was done by the Nearest Neighbour algorithm has produced more appealing classes with higher accuracy. Also, it was concluded that OBIA has more power for extracting geographic information and easier integration within the GIS, whereas the result of this research is estimated to be applicable for classifying UAV’s imagery used for LULC applications.

During the planning stages of new business start-ups in Leksand, it was decided that an archaeological survey of the area in question was to be performed in 2013. The reason for this was that in the 1980s findings of Stone Age character had been found in the clay field that once was there. In the 2013 survey, it was found that the area is a stone age settlement, dating back close to 9, 600 BP ( early mesolithic age). Stone age settlements are usually very close to rivers or lakes. For this reason, there arenormally no archaeological surveys of areas not adjacent to water. But this settlement was found on a clay field, 100 meters from the nearest water, Limsjön.The reason for this is that the water level at the time of the settlement's construction was higher in the ground than today. This is b ecause of the uplift of land that occurs in Sweden. The settlement, which was built close to 10,000 years ago was built when the water level was about 10 meters above todays water level at Limsjön. The purpose of this work is to produce maps showing where the whole Siljan shore line was at the time when the first people settled there. This will be done using information for the water surface position close to the settlement from 10,000 years ago to. The old shore line is several 10’s of kilometers long. To get more specific areas the maps also show suitable settlement areas based on the soil types that people have settled on during that time. These maps will then be used as a supportfor choosing areas where archaeological surveys might be of interest. / Under planeringen av nya företagsetableringar i Leksand valde man att 2013 utföra en arkeologisk undersökning av det aktuella området. Anledningen var att man på 1980-talet funnit fynd av stenålderskaraktär i den leråker som låg där då. I undersökningen framkom det att området är en stenåldersboplats, daterad till som äldst omkring 9 600 BP ( tidigmesolitisk tid). Stenåldersboplatser finns i regel i mycket nära anknytning till vattendrag och sjöar. Av denna anledning görs det normalt sett inga arkeologiska undersökningar av denna typ om området inte ligger intill vatten. Men denna boplats hittades alltså på en leråker, 100 meter från det närmsta vattnet, Limsjön. Anledningen till detta är att vattennivån vid tiden för boplatsens uppförande låg högre upp i terrängen än vad den gör idag. På grund av landhöjningen har vattenytans nivå sjunkit i terrängen. Boplatsen som uppfördes för nära 10 000 år sedan uppfördes när vattenytan låg cirka 10 meter högre upp i terrängen vid Limsjön. Syftet med detta arbete är att utifrån information för vattenytans läge vid boplatsen för 10 000 år sedan ta fram kartor som visar var hela Siljans strand låg i terrängen för tiden då de första människorna bosatte sig där. Den forna strandkanten är flera mil lång. För att få fram mer specifika områden ska kartorna även visa områden som är lämpliga boplatsområden, utifrån vilka jordarter som människorna har bosatt sig på under den tiden. Dessa kartor ska sedan kunna användas som underlag för var arkeologiska undersökningar skulle kunna vara intressanta att genomföra.

Neste trabalho foram analisados 49 diamantes coloridos da coleção Luiz Paixão incorporados 1954 ao acervo do Museu de Geociências do IGc-USP. Os diamantes foram pesados, medidos, fotografados e alguns foram escolhidos para análise espectroscópica no UV-VIS com a finalidade de auxiliar no estudo de centros de cor e distinção sobre a origem da cor nos diamantes quanto esta ser natural ou artificialmente induzida. Pelo resultado da interpretação dos espectros obtidos, uma parte desta coleção de diamantes coloridos sofreu tratamentos de cor por irradiação, demonstrando que no Brasil na época da formação desta coleção já era possivel de encontrar diamantes tratados o que é um fato interessnte considerando os poucos reatores nucleares existentes na época. / This work presents results of an analysis of 49 colored diamonds from the Luiz Paixão Collection, donated 1954 to the Geological Museum of Geoscience Institute of University of São Paulo. They have been measured, photographed and some have been selected for detailed spectroscopic analysis by UV/VIS spectroscopy. By this method it is possible to detect if the color of the diamond is natural or produced by treatment. The presence of specific absorption peaks and their intensity in the spectrograms revealed that all blue and green diamonds indeed showed signs of treatment and their color is not natural. This is a very interesting fact and shows that already in times before the donation treated diamonds were apparently easily available in Brasil. Considering the paucity of nuclear reactors in the United States or in Europe in those times this result is very surprising.

Esta tese tem por escopo discutir o ensino de Geociências na Educação Básica, partindo da análise de um contexto social e escolar a fim de alavancar a construção de um curso de formação continuada de professores, visando, também, a promoção de uma fundamentação metodológica para que os docentes possam desenvolver um processo de ensino-aprendizagem baseado na interdisciplinaridade a partir da pesquisa de problemas bem delimitados. Adota-se um procedimento de pesquisa de estudo de caso e de desenvolvimento, partindo-se da análise de um contexto escolar e da construção, implementação e avaliação de um curso de formação docente denominado GeoIlhas, fundamentado metodologicamente no formato de curso on- line, massivo e aberto (MOOC). Na etapa inicial da pesquisa avaliou-se o desempenho de professores da Educação Básica e de alunos do Ensino Médio do município de Caçapava do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul, em uma avaliação de conhecimentos básicos de geociências e se debateu o cenário das Geociências no Ensino Básico Brasileiro, cujos resultados indicam um baixo desempenho na avaliação, tanto pelos alunos, quanto pelos professores. Na segunda etapa, que se constituiu do planejamento, produção, implementação e avaliação do curso de formação continuada de professores, no formato MOOC, objetivou-se a discussão de conceitos básicos das Geociências, bem como a articulação de uma fundamentação metodológica capaz de promover um processo de ensino-aprendizagem interdisciplinar Entre os principais resultados aponta-se a qualidade pedagógica do curso como fundamental para o bom desempenho dos usuários, através da problematização inicial e da revisão final em cada bloco. Igualmente, indicam algumas características que são importantes para o sucesso de um curso que segue essa estrutura, tal como, a possibilidade de oferecer forte interação entre os mesmos e a comunidade, oferecendo melhores resultados para as videoaulas com curta duração e gravadas em ambientes informais. Na etapa final da investigação fez-se uma discussão teórica sobre as perspectivas pedagógicas para a escola da cultura digital, resultados que se moldaram durante toda a pesquisa de desenvolvimento, apontando indicativos de que a escola perdeu a maioria das suas finalidades, entendendo que haverá muita dificuldade de coexistir com os novos corpos e subjetividades que as habitam. Sugere-se uma mudança na sua concepção metodológica, com a inclusão não somente de aparatos tecnológicos digitais, todavia abrangendo as novas formas de interação. / This thesis aims to discuss the teaching of Geosciences in Elementary Education, starting from a social and school context in order to leverage the construction of a course of continuous training of teachers, intending also to promote a methodological ground for the teachers develop a process of teaching-learning based on interdisciplinarity from a research of well delimited problems. To this work is adopted a case study and development procedure of research, starting from the analysis of a school context and the construction, implementation and evaluation of a teacher training course called GeoIlhas (Geo-Islands), methodologically based on the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). In the initial stage of the research, it had verified that the performance of teachers of elementary education and high school students in the city of Caçapava do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul, in an assessment of basic knowledge of geosciences, whose results indicate a low performance in the evaluation, both by students and by teachers. In the second stage of the research that consisted about the planning, production, implementation and evaluation of the training teacher course, in MOOC format, it had the aim to discuss the basic concepts of geoscience, and the articulation of methodological grounds able to promote an interdisciplinary teaching-learning process Among the main results, it has pointed out the pedagogical quality of the course as fundamental for the good performance of the users, through an initial problematization and a final revision in each block. It is also indicated some characteristics that are important to the success of a course that follows this structure, such as the possibility of offering strong interaction between them and the community, offering better results for the video-classes with short duration and recorded in informal environments. In the final stage of the research, it has been made a theoretical discussion about the pedagogical perspectives for the school on digital culture, results that were shaped during the whole development research, pointing indications that the school had lost most of its purposes, understanding that there will be a lot of difficulty of coexisting with the new bodies and subjectivities that inhabit them. It is suggested a change in its methodological conception, with the inclusion not only of digital technological devices, but also of new forms of interaction.

Neste trabalho foram analisados 49 diamantes coloridos da coleção Luiz Paixão incorporados 1954 ao acervo do Museu de Geociências do IGc-USP. Os diamantes foram pesados, medidos, fotografados e alguns foram escolhidos para análise espectroscópica no UV-VIS com a finalidade de auxiliar no estudo de centros de cor e distinção sobre a origem da cor nos diamantes quanto esta ser natural ou artificialmente induzida. Pelo resultado da interpretação dos espectros obtidos, uma parte desta coleção de diamantes coloridos sofreu tratamentos de cor por irradiação, demonstrando que no Brasil na época da formação desta coleção já era possivel de encontrar diamantes tratados o que é um fato interessnte considerando os poucos reatores nucleares existentes na época. / This work presents results of an analysis of 49 colored diamonds from the Luiz Paixão Collection, donated 1954 to the Geological Museum of Geoscience Institute of University of São Paulo. They have been measured, photographed and some have been selected for detailed spectroscopic analysis by UV/VIS spectroscopy. By this method it is possible to detect if the color of the diamond is natural or produced by treatment. The presence of specific absorption peaks and their intensity in the spectrograms revealed that all blue and green diamonds indeed showed signs of treatment and their color is not natural. This is a very interesting fact and shows that already in times before the donation treated diamonds were apparently easily available in Brasil. Considering the paucity of nuclear reactors in the United States or in Europe in those times this result is very surprising.

Diarrheal diseases are a global public health burden, killing 1.8 million people annually. Diarrhea disproportionately affects children and those in poverty. Most diarrheal cases can be prevented through safe drinking water, basic hygiene and/or sanitation measures, with drinking water interventions having the most impact on reducing diarrheal disease. There is no generally agreed-upon field method for determining biosand water filter effectiveness that is usable in low-resource communities. A pilot study was conducted of potential field use indicators, including the Colilert coliform presence/absence (P/A) test, hydrogen sulfide, alkalinity, hardness, pH, and fluorescently labeled latex microspheres. The study included both laboratory and field testing. The Colilert P/A test had the highest correlation to the United States Environmental Protection Agency standard method (IDEXX Quanti-trays), but more data are needed before making a recommendation. This study adds to understanding about evaluation of biosand water filters and provides preliminary data to address the need for a field use indicator for biosand water filters.

The former Viking settlement Birka is located on Björkö Island in Lake Mälaren, the third largest lake in Sweden. Birka is a well-known archeological site that onshore has been carefully examined. The lake floor of the waters surrounding the island has been less investigated but has a great potential to host not yet discovered archeological objects from this former hub for seafarers. Therefore, a geophysical survey including multibeam sonar mapping and subbottom profiling was carried out mainly along the shores of western Björkö Island. Processing and analysis of these collected data form the basis of this thesis. The main aims of this study are to produce a suite of geological maps and stratigraphic profiles that are used to geologically interpret the uppermost sediment stratigraphy and the bathymetry of the area. In addition, the processed data are investigated for archeological objects. The result shows that the acoustic records of the sediment stratigraphy reaches back to glacial clay formed as a consequence of the retreat of the Late Weichselian ice sheet, and that the uppermost sediment units probably are from the time after the isolation of Lake Mälaren from the Baltic Sea. The bathymetry and backscatter results have revealed that this relatively shallow study area contains several objects that potentially could be of interest from an archeological point of view. These objects include several unidentified objects in the Björkö strait and two unregistered shipwrecks where ground truthing data need to be collected to determine their respective origin.

Three studies on Cordilleran foreland basin deposits in the western U.S.A. constitute this dissertation. These studies differ in scale, time and discipline. The first two studies include basin analysis, flexural modeling and detailed stratigraphic analysis of Upper Cretaceous depocenters and strata in the western U.S.A. The third study consists of detrital zircon U-Pb analysis (DZ U-Pb) and thermochronology, both zircon (U-Th)/He and apatite fission track (AFT), of Upper Jurassic to Upper Cretaceous foreland-basin conglomerates and sandstones. Five electronic supplementary files are a part of this dissertation and are available online; these include 3 raw data files (Appendix_A_raw_isopach_data.txt, Appendix_C_DZ_Data.xls, Appendix_C_UPb_apatite.xls), 1 oversized stratigraphic cross section (Appendix_B_figure_5.pdf), and 1 figure containing apatite U-Pb concordia plots (Appendix_C_Concordia.pdf). Appendix A. Subsidence in the retroarc foreland of the North American Cordillera in the western U.S.A. has been the focus of a great deal of research, and its transition from a flexural foreland basin, during the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous, to a dynamically subsided basin during the Late Cretaceous has been well documented. However, the exact timing of the flexural to dynamic transition is not well constrained, and the mechanism has been consistently debated. In order to address the timing, I produced new isopach maps from ~130 well log data points that cover much of Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and northern New Mexico, producing in the process, the most detailed isopach maps of the area. These isopach maps span the Turonian to mid-Campanian during the Late Cretaceous (~93–76 Ma). In conjunction with the isopach maps I flexurally modeled the Cordilleran foreland basin to identify when flexure can no longer account for the basin geometry and identified the flexural to dynamic transition to have occurred at 81 Ma. In addition, the dynamic subsidence at 81 Ma is compared to the position of the hypothesized Shatsky Oceanic Plateau and other proposed drivers of dynamic subsidence. I concluded that dynamic subsidence is likely caused by convection over the plunging nose of the Shatsky Oceanic Plateau. Appendix B. The second study is a detailed stratigraphic study of the Upper Cretaceous, (Campanian, ~76 Ma) Sego Sandstone Member of the Mesaverde Group in northwestern Colorado, an area where little research has been done on this formation. Its equivalent in the Book Cliffs area in eastern Utah has been rigorously documented and its distal progradation has been contrastingly interpreted as a result of active tectonism and shortening in the Cordilleran orogenic belt ~250 km to the west and to tectonic quiescence, flexural rebound in the thrust belt and reworking of proximal coarse grained deposits. I documented ~17 km of along depositional dip outcrops of the Sego Sandstone Member north of Rangely, Colorado. This documentation includes measured sections, paleocurrent analysis, a stratigraphic cross section, block diagrams outlining the evolution of environments of deposition through time, and paleogeographic maps correlating northwest Colorado with the Book Cliffs, Utah. The sequence stratigraphy of the Sego Sandstone Member in northwest Colorado is similar to that documented in the Book Cliffs area to the south-southwest, sharing three sequence boundaries. However, flood-tidal delta assemblages between fluvio-deltaic deposits that are present north of Rangely, Colorado are absent from the Book Cliffs area. These flood-tidal-delta assemblages are likely caused by a large scale avulsion event in the Rangely area that did not occur or was not preserved in the Book Cliffs area. In regards to tectonic models that explain distal progradation of the 76 Ma Sego Sandstone Member to be caused by tectonic quiescence and flexural rebound in the thrust belt, the first study shows that at 76 Ma, flexural processes were no longer dominant in the Cordilleran foreland, so it is inappropriate to apply models driven by flexure to the Sego Sandstone Member. Dynamic processes dominated the western U.S.A. during the Campanian, and flexural processes were subordinate. Appendix C. In order to test the tectonic vs. anti-tectonic basin-filling models for distal coarse foreland deposits mentioned above, the third study involves estimating lag times of Upper Jurassic to Upper Cretaceous conglomerates and sandstones in the Cordilleran foreland basin. Measuring lag time requires a good understanding of both the stratigraphic age of a deposit and the thermal history of sedimentary basin. To further constrain depositional age, I present twenty-two new detrital zircon U-Pb (DZ U-Pb) sample analyses, spanning Upper Jurassic to Upper Cretaceous stratigraphy in Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and South Dakota. Source exhumation ages can be measured using thermochronology. To identify a thermochronometer that measures source exhumation in the North America Cordillera, both zircon (U-Th)/He, on eleven samples, and apatite fission track (AFT) thermochronology, on eleven samples was performed. Typically, the youngest cooling age population in detrital thermochronologic analyses is considered to be a source exhumation signal; however, whether or not these apatites are exhumed apatites or derived from young magmatic and volcanic sources has been debated. To test this, I double dated the detrital AFT samples, targeting apatites with a young cooling age, using U-Pb thermochronology. Key findings are that the maximum depositional ages using DZ U-Pb match existing biostratigraphic and geochronologic age controls on basin stratigraphy. AFT is an effective thermochronometer for Lower to Upper Cretaceous foreland stratigraphy and indicates that source material was exhumed from >4–5 km depth in the Cordilleran orogenic belt between 118 and 66 Ma, and zircon (U-Th)/He suggests that it was exhumed from <8–9 km depth. Double dating apatites (with AFT and U-Pb) indicate that volcanic contamination is a significant issue; without having UPb dating of the same apatite grains, one cannot exclude the possibility that the youngest detrital AFT population is contaminated with significant amounts of volcanogenic apatite and does not represent source exhumation. AFT lag-times are 0 to 5 Myr with relatively steady-state to slightly increasing exhumation rates. We compare our data to orogenic wedge dynamics and subsidence histories; all data shows active shortening and rapid exhumation throughout the Cretaceous. Our lag-time measurements indicate exhumation rates of ~.9–>>1 km/Myr.

The background state and changes associated with the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the tropical Pacific Ocean influence climate patterns all over the world. Understanding how the tropical Pacific will be impacted by climate change is therefore critical to accurate regional climate projections. However, sparse historical data coverage and strong natural variability in the basin make it difficult to assess the response of the tropical Pacific to anthropogenic climate change. Further, climate models disagree regarding the response of the basin to continued anthropogenic forcing into the future. Building off of the limited instrumental record, high-resolution records from coral and lake sediment archives can be used to assess the response of the tropical Pacific to past climate changes and to compare and assess climate model projections. In the present study, I use high-resolution coral and lake records from the equatorial Pacific to assess climate model projections and the response of the coupled ocean-atmospheric climate system in the basin (ocean temperature, salinity, winds, precipitation) to natural and anthropogenic forcing. Using a simple model of how climate is recorded by corals, we compare historical climate data and climate model simulations with coral paleoclimate records to assess climate model projections and address uncertainties in the historical data, models and paleoclimate records. We demonstrate that this simple model is able to capture variability and trend observed in the coral records, and show that the both sea surface temperature and salinity contribute to the observed coral trend. However, we find major discrepancies in the observed and climate model simulated trends in the tropical Pacific that may be attributed to uncertainties in model simulated salinity. We then assess 20th-century variability and trends in SST and salinity in the central tropical Pacific using replicated coral δ¹⁸O and Sr/Ca records from the Republic of Kiribati and the central Line Islands. We find that the coral records from these sites display a warming and freshening trend superimposed on strong interannual and low-frequency variability. Further, we demonstrate an apparent strengthening of the E-W SST gradient across the dateline (between 173°E and 160°W) and a slight weakening of the N-S SST gradient due to enhanced warming along the equator and west of the dateline relative to other sites. However, we find no evidence of increased variability in the central Pacific, suggesting that there has not been an increase in central Pacific style ENSO events. Finally, we show that the salinity response to climate change may be very patchy within the basin. Using a new ~90 year coral Mn/Ca record from the central Pacific, we investigate variability and trends in tropical Pacific trade winds. First, we demonstrate a strong association between westerly wind anomalies and coral skeletal Mn/Ca, which recorded all of the major historical El Niño events of the 20th century. In this new long Mn/Ca record, we find a reduction in the amplitude and frequency of Mn/Ca pulses between 1893 and 1982, suggesting a decrease in westerly wind anomalies in the western equatorial Pacific Ocean. Finally, we use a sediment record from Bainbridge Crater Lake, Galápagos Archipelago to assess variability in the eastern tropical Pacific over the past ~6 thousand years. Based on results from long-term monitoring of the lake, we propose a new climate interpretation of the sediment record and find further evidence reduced mid-Holocene ENSO variability and a ramp up of ENSO variability starting around 1775 cal. years BP.