November 12, 2013
Acacia seyal pollen
Gosling, W.D., Miller, C.S. & Livingstone, D.A. (2013) Atlas of the tropical West African pollen flora. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology, 199: 1-135. doi: 10.1016/j.revpalbo.2013.01.003
November 6, 2013
The outcome of the Natural Environments Research Council (NERC) call for Doctoral Training Partnerships (DTPs) was announced late on Monday 4th November. I am delighted to be able to report that The Open University (OU) has been funded through the DTP scheme as part of the “Central England NERC Training Alliance” (CENTA). Having co-developed the OU contribution to CENTA with our research centre director Prof. Simon Kelley I am also somewhat relieved by this positive outcome.
The CENTA group comprises four other universities in addition to the OU (University of Birmingham, University of Leicester, University of Warwick, and Loughborough University) and two partner organisations (British Geological Survey and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology). CENTA will host studentships across the range of NERC science with particular focus on four key science themes:
Opportunities to join the PCRG here at the OU through this scheme will be adverstised shortly. If you are interested in PhD projects in any of the above areas keep an eye out for further details of CENTA projects and opportunities over the next few weeks.
To find out more about CENTA visit the DTP website by clicking here.
October 31, 2013
NEW from the Department of Environment, Earth & Ecosystems at The Open University a Massive Open Online Course:
Introduction to Ecosystems
Starts 18-Nov-13
Runs for 8wks and needs 3hrs per week
Completely free and needs no prior knowledge.
Course description: “Ecosystems is about the relationships between living organisms. Gain an understanding of the natural world and how the web of life works, with illustrations from around the world.”
REGISTRATION NOW OPEN
Sign up at FutureLearn
October 15, 2013
Nick Loughlin working…
Hi, my name’s Nick and I’m joining the Palaeoenvironmental Change Research Group as a PhD student on a NERC funded project looking at the response of tropical forests to past changes in global climate.
I’m excited to be going off to Ecuador in November (with Encarni and Will) to undertake the sampling of lake sediments around the Estación Biológica Pindo Mirador and the National Park of Cayambe Coca, from which I hope to be able to determine changes in the ecology of the mountainous flora of the Andean regions of Ecuador during the last glacial and current interglacial periods.
Before starting at the OU I undertook a BSc in Geological Sciences at the University of Plymouth and an MSc in Palaeobiology at the University of Bristol working on the palaeoecology of lower Cambrian trace fossils in brackish water environments in an attempt to constrain the evolution and radiation of early metazoans.
I’m thrilled to be starting at the OU and am looking forward to splitting my time trekking through tropical rainforests and staring at microscopic pollen in a lab in Milton Keynes.
To date I have published one scientific paper, I hope to produce many more over the next few years…
Loughlin, N.J.D. & Hillier, R.D. (2010) Early Cambrian Teichichnius-dominated ichnofabrics and palaeoenvironmental analysis of the Caerfal Group, Southwest Wales, UK. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 297(2): 239-251. doi: 10.1016/j.palaeo.2010.07.030
October 14, 2013
Adele Julier and a Malvaceae
Hello! I’m Adele and I started my PhD about a week ago. It’s been a little intense but I can almost find the lab without a map now, so it is probably time to introduce myself.
I’ll be studying pollen-vegetation relationships in Ghana, as part of the NERC funded project ‘500,000 years of solar irradiance, climate and vegetation changes’. This means I’ll be using pollen traps to figure out how pollen outputs vary between (and sometimes within) different vegetation types in Ghana. I will also be trying my hand at chemotaxonomy and video making. I’m heading out to Ghana (along with Phil Jardine) in just over a week to do my first lot of field work which will involve seeing the plots, collecting existing traps, replacing them with new ones, and setting up some new sites. I’m very excited.
My background is broadly botanical; I did a BA at Magdalene College, Cambridge in Natural Sciences specialising in Plant Science and then an MSc in Biodiversity and Taxonomy of Plants at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh.
Here’s a picture of me holding the biggest Malvaceae flower I’d ever seen and being incredibly happy about that.
To find out more about me visit my blog: Plants in real life
October 2, 2013
Section of fossil wood from Ecuador
Having been away for half of the month I asked people to provide a summary of what they have been up to. Here is what they admitted to…
Natalie Ludgate and Lottie Miller have submitted their theses! Well done.
Hayley Keen: “Continual pollen counting, second lot of Argon dating done, and first set of wood macrofossils back and ready for identification!”
Frazer Bird: “At the start of September I began working as a technician as part of Encarni’s project. I am looking at the midges from the core we collected together on our last field trip. Things are going well, although the midges are hard to find in the older sections the preservation in early sequences is great. The resolution of this core looks to be fantastic also so and hopefully we will get some interesting results when we compare all the proxies. Away fromthe lab I presented at INTECOL 2013 in London, The talk seemed to go down well and was noted as highly commended by the judging panel. Great publicity all round for the midges!!!”
Bryan Valencia: Has been on field work in Peru during this time he presented a talk on climate change to the Asociación para la Conservación de la Cuenca Amazónica, and gave interviews to local journalists and two TV stations. He also collected sediments from two locations, and manged to obtain a new US visa. He is now working on the final stages of submitting his thesis.
Phil Jardine: Phil has been busy ordering in microscopes and other equipment for the Lake Bosumtwi project (the first of which arrived today), and setting up the trip to Ghana that he’ll be going on with new PhD student Adele Julier in late October. He’s also been attempting to learn more about geochemistry, which has proved challenging.
William Gosling: “I have been promoted to Senior Lecturer (hooray), started work on the new level 2 environmental science module, been working on a new paper from the Erazo study site, and had a holiday!”
October 1, 2013
Early online:
Rull, V., Montoya, E., Nogué, S., Vegas-Vilarrúbia, T., Safont, E., (online) Ecological palaeoecology in the neotropical Gran Sabana region: Long-term records of vegetation dynamics as a basis for ecological hypothesis testing. Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics. doi: 10.1016/j.ppees.2013.07.004
October 1, 2013
Human modification of the landscape in the Andes (Peru)
Whilst working on intergrating palaeoecological and archaeological data for a recent publication (Gosling & Williams, 2013) I was struck by the range of sources I had to go to to obtain data from the two different disciplines. The paper focuses on the how societies in the high Andes have developed over the last 5000 years and the role, if any, that changes in natural resource (ecosystem service) avaliability might have played in pacing any societal changes. However, when I got the first set of review comments back I was left considering my (academic) resource base, how I accessed this, and how that influenced my ability to conduct research; especially when moving slightly outside the area of my specialism.
September 4, 2013
Will’s BES T-shirt logo swabbed at Greenman; for more microbes on festival kit visit the “Hall of shame” on http://www.besfest.org
August was a month for travel with PCRG members heading for Peru (Bryan, and he is still there), Greenman festival (William), INTECOL conference (William and Frazer), and the Royal Geographic Society annual meeting (William, Encarni, Frazer and Hayley). Detailed reports of the UK based travels are already on the blog, and hopefully we will get a post from Bryan on his Peruvian adventure once he is back.
Back in Milton Keynes work progressed with:
August 30, 2013
Phil Jardine
My name’s Phil Jardine, and I’ve recently joined the Palaeoenvironmental Change Research Group as a post-doc, on the NERC-funded ‘500,000 years of solar irradiance, climate and vegetation changes’. For this project I’ll be analysing the chemistry of pollen grains from a 500,000 year long sediment record from Lake Bosumtwi in Ghana, with the aim of generating a long-term historical record of solar irradiance.
Before coming to the Open University I was based at the University of Birmingham, where I did PhD and post-doc research on North American pollen records from the early Palaeogene (~65 – 45 million years ago). For this work I was particularly interested in the role of climate in driving changes in plant communities, especially during a rapid global warming event 55 million years called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). Having worked for some time now on pretty old material, I’m looking forward to researching something a bit more recent – if you can call the last 500,000 years recent – and going out to Ghana and looking at real, live, tropical plants.
If you would like to get in touch about the Lake Bosumtwi project, or something else pollen related, please feel free to get in touch.
Ecology of the past 