The U.S. Geological Survey is conducting a long-term study of mid-Pliocene climatic and oceanographic conditions. One of the key elements of the study involves the use of quantitative composition of planktic foraminifer assemblages in conjunction with other proxies to constrain estimates of sea-surface temperature (SST) and to identify major oceanographic boundaries and water masses.
Raw census data are made available as soon as possible after analysis through a series of reports that provide the basic data for future work. In this report we present raw census data (table 1) for planktic foraminifer assemblages in 14 samples from Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Hole 677A. We also present alkenone unsaturation index (UK'37) analyses for 89 samples from ODP Hole 677A (table 2). ODP Hole 677A is located in the Panama basin, due west of Ecuador at 1?12.138'N., 83?44.220'W., in 3461.2 meters of water (fig. 1).
A variety of statistical methods have been developed to transform foraminiferal census data in Pliocene sequences into quantitative estimates of Pliocene SST. Details of statistical techniques, taxonomic groupings, and oceanographic interpretations are presented in more formal publications (Dowsett and Poore, 1990, 1991; Dowsett, 1991, 2007a,b; Dowsett and Robinson, 1998, 2007; Dowsett and others, 1996, 1999).
