News | Ecology of the past

Relay team palaeo

March 1, 2012
WDG

The 21st The Open University Les Irvine Memorial Relay was held yesterday (29/02/2012) and four teams from the Environment, Earth & Ecosystems department were entered amoung the 40 which took part. Run over four legs and covering a 1.1 mile course at Walton Hall it was another fun event.

For the third year running a team of palaeoecologists took part. This year “Team Palaeo” comprised Hayley Keen, myself, Frazer Bird and Lottie Miller (left to right on photo) and we were the fastest finishing team from the department!

British Ecological meetings

February 23, 2012
WDG

BES careers 2012

I am currently a member of the British Ecological Society (BES) council. The BES is a ‘learned society’ based at Charles Darwin House in London which publishes four academic journals, has thousands of members and is open to anyone with an interest in ecology. As part of my role on council I serve on two committees which run different aspects of the societies activity: 1) meetings, and 2) education, training and career s. This month we have had meetings of both these committees. Two highlights of the societies activity related to these committees were:

the establishment of a new Special Interest Group in Macroecology, and
the forthcoming undergraduate careers conference.

PCRG January

January 27, 2012
WDG

January 2012 has been a busy one for the Palaeoenvironmental Change Research Group members we have been getting out and about (attending three research meetings), there has been activity in the labs (pollen, chironomids and geochemical analysis all being undertaken) and developments with the publication of our research (book chapter published and two papers moved along in the publication process).

Open University Geological Society

January 23, 2012
WDG

Last Saturday (21st January) the West Midlands Open University Geological Society held a day of lectures at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Birmingham. I was one of five invited speakers who covered a wide range of topics related to geology: Snowball Earth (McMillan, Birmingham), earthquakes in Chile (Ryder, Liverpool), salt mines of Cheshire (Carlon), Icelandic eruptions (Watson, Bristol) and myself on glacial-interglacial cycles in the tropics. The Dome lecture theater was full and it was exciting to be able to engage OUGS members directly with reaserch being conducted in the Palaeoenvironmental Change Research Group at The OU. Therefore, many thanks to Ron Whitfield for inviting me and organising the event. I will certainly be recommending attending and speaking at these events to my departmental collegues.

Visit the OUGS website to find out about other activities and events like this.

Hutton Club

January 16, 2012
WDG

On Friday I had the privilege of presenting research from the Palaeoenvironmental Change Research Group to the Hutton Club at the University of Edinburgh (Institute of Geography). My talk, entitled “Assessing the impact of Quaternary glacial-interglacial cycles in the tropics”, drew on: 1) empirical data on past vegetation change from sedimentary records spanning multiple glacial-interglacial cycles; Lake Titicaca (370,000 years), Erazo (middle Pleistocene) and Lake Bosumtwi (500,000 years), and 2) model climate-vegetation data from the GENIE-1 model. The combination of these new long tropical records with model data strongly suggests that the long-term pattern of vegetation response to global glacial-interglacial cycles is differently structured at low-latitudes when compared with mid-latitudes. The different pattern of change suggested in response to past global climate variation might suggest that the response of tropical vegetation change to predicted future climate change could be different to that anticipated for mid- and high-latitudes.

To find out more check out the references below.

First blog post

January 1, 2012
WDG

January 2012.

Last year at the British Ecological Society symposium in Cambridge (Forests and Global Change) I very much enjoyed an evening talk by Ed Yong regarding science blogging and the purpose of blogging. I had always been slightly skeptical of blogs and failed to see the point of adding to the ever increasing mass of electronic ‘junk’. However, Ed got me interested… he writes the award winning blog Not Exactly Rocket Science and a great blogging advocate. The key point which grabbed my attention was that with a blog you can be now not only be “famous for 15 mins” but also “famous for 15 people”. Ed pointed out that this is particularly good news for academics who work in relatively small specialized fields so long as you are ‘famous’ for the right 15 people the blog is worthwhile. Anyway, I thought about this for some time trying to work out who might be the right 15 for me; I have outlined the my conclusions on the “Aims” page of this blog. Then I thought that the start of 2012 and the busy academic schedule for January was as good a time to start as any.

So here goes… If things go according to plan hopefully posts on Quaternary Research Association annual discussion meeting “Quaternary Science and Society” (4-6th Jan), the PAGES “Biodiversity” meeting (9-11th Jan) and Hutton Club Lecture in Edinburgh (13th Jan).