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Some Current & Past Projects:
A complete list of papers and abstracts is available here.
Why study the climate of the past?
By extending our knowledge of climate beyond instrumental records, paleoclimate records provide thousands (even millions) of years of relevant data to help meet the challenges of detecting and predicting anthropogenic climate change. Quaternary paleoclimate data are essential for validating predictive climate models, and provide much-needed context for the rapid physical and ecological changes currently occuring around the world.
The Arctic is changing rapidly today. And ongoing changes in the arctic cryosphere (ice and snow) and hydrosphere (water) have important ramifications for global climate. Understanding how the arctic environment has changed in the past may shed light on both the future of the Arctic, and the future of the wider world.
My dissertation research focused on the climate histories of Iceland and Baffin Island. The economies and natural environments of Iceland and Nunavut are potentially very vulnerable to future climate change. It is important to understand the nature, rate, and magnitude of past paleoenvironmental changes in these regions in order to help constrain future risks. Paleoenvironmental records from the warm early Holocene provide glimpses of what the environments of Iceland and Nunavut might look like in a future greenhouse world.
Click here to learn more about one of my study sites, a pair of neighboring lakes in northeastern Iceland.
A
beautiful little lake in Iceland's harsh interior uplands.
Want to see more photos?
Marine sediment cores and ice cores provide a wealth of paleoclimate information, but these records are limited in their geographic coverage. Lake sediments are valuable paleoclimate archives because lakes are geographically widespread and their sediments are datable by radiocarbon, are often deposited continuously, and may yield records of up to annual resolution. Lake sediments contain an incredible variety of different proxies for past climate and environmental conditions -- from pollen grains to human-generated pollutants. Also, lake sediment cores can be recovered by as few as 2-3 people using relatively inexpensive, portable equipment.
Click here to see photos of strange (but ultimately successful!) ways to core a lake.
Chironomids (better known as non-biting midges, Insecta: Diptera: Chironomidae) are a diverse and nearly ubiquitous family of two-winged flies. Chironomids spend much of their life cycle as aquatic larvae. The larval head capsules of chironomids are chitinous and usually well preserved in lake sediments. Distinctive mouth parts and other features make many head capsules recognizable to at least the generic level. Because many chironomid taxa have temperature-dependent habitat distributions, fossil chironomid assemblages are useful as paleotemperature indicators.
Head capsules of the genus Micropsectra isolated from Baffin Island lake sediments for stable isotope analyses.
Research-Related
Links
ARCSS 2-kyr Synthesis Project
EU Millennium Project
Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research
(INSTAAR)
University of Iceland
World Data Center
for Paleoclimatology
National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC)
The Chironomid
Home Page
European
Subfossil Chironomidae
Ian Walker's WWW Field
Guide to Subfossil Midges
Epler's key
to midges of the Carolinas
UMN Chironomidae Research
Group
Fauna Europa
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
-- winner of the Nobel Peace Prize
RealClimate.Org
Arctic Climate Impact Assessment
Andrew Dessler's
blog at Grist.com
Myvatn Research Station
monitors a fascinating ecosystem in Iceland
Arctic
sea ice news -- the latest from the National Snow and Ice Data Center
AGU's
position statement re: Human Impacts on Climate -- recently updated