Earth-Life Transitions Collaborative Research: Evolutionary and ecological responses of small mammal communities to habitat and climate change over the last 5 million years

Lead PI: Pratigya Polissar, Kevin Uno

Unit Affiliation: Biology and Paleo Environment, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO)

August 2013 - July 2017
Inactive
Atlantic Ocean
Project Type: Research

DESCRIPTION: This research-- a collaborative effort between scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University-- will develop annually-resolved reconstructions of late Holocene temperature from the northeastern United States using living and subfossil Atlantic White Cedar trees. This species is temperature-sensitive, long-lived, and well-preserved in wetland environments. The resulting reconstructions will be used to characterize variability in regional temperatures at time scales from interannual to millennial, to evaluate climate model simulations over the last millennium, and identify the signature of internal, remote, and global forcing on the climate of the northeastern United States.

SPONSOR:

National Science Foundation (NSF)

FUNDED AMOUNT:

$110,119

WEBSITE:

https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1338243&HistoricalAwards=false

PUBLICATIONS:

Fox, David Martin, Robert A. Roepke, Elizabeth Fetrow, Anne Fischer-Femal, Brenden Uno, Kevin T. Fox-Dobbs, K Snell, Kathryn E. Haveles, Andrew W. Polissar, P. J.. "Biotic and Abiotic Forcing During the Transition to Modern Grassland Ecosystems: Evolutionary and Ecological Responses of Small Mammal Communities Over the Last 5 Million Years," The Paleontological Society Papers: Earth Life Transitions, Paleobiology in the Context of Earth System Evolution, v.21, 2015, p. 197. doi:1089-3326

KEYWORDS

atlantic white cedar trees holocene wetland subfossil