Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): Dust obscuration in galaxies and their recent star formation histories

We present self-consistent star formation rates derived through pan-spectral analysis of galaxies drawn from the Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey. We determine the most appropriate form of dust obscuration correction via application of a range of extinction laws drawn from the literature as applied to H , [Oii] and UV luminosities. These corrections are applied to a sample of 31 508 galaxies from the GAMA survey at z < 0:35. We consider several dierent obscuration curves, including those of Milky Way, Calzetti (2001) and Fischera and Dopita (2005) curves and their eects on the observed luminosities. At the core of this technique is the observed Balmer decrement, and we provide a prescription to apply optimal obscuration corrections using the Balmer decrement. We carry out an analysis of the star formation history (SFH) using stellar population synthesis tools to investigate the evolutionary history of our sample of galaxies as well as to understand the eects of variation in the Initial Mass Function (IMF) and the eects this has on the evolutionary history of galaxies. We nd that the Fischera & Dopita (2005) obscuration curve with an