Paleoecology course University of Amsterdam

September 29, 2014
Valerie

Students examining a sediment core extracted with a Russian corer

Students examining a sediment core extracted with a Russian corer

Last week, Will – our new associate professor at the University of Amsterdam – joined us on the field residential module of the undergraduate “Paleoecology” course; 7 days exploring the sediments and vegetation of the Twente region of the Netherlands. The experience provided Will with a lot of information on Dutch language, landscapes, and students; which should be useful to him next year as he will be coordinating the course!

Students examining peat exposures.

Students examining peat exposures.

During this very intensive (4-week) paleoecology course, students get background lectures in past environmental change, learn to identify microfossils in the laboratory (pollen and chironomids), and go on the excursion to experience fieldwork. The field module involves excursions during the day, when students have to identify plant species indicative of different vegetation types in relation to soil nutrient availability and moisture content. The evenings are reserved for the students own paleoecological research investigation; this year students were reconstructing the vegetation history and climate change during the late-glacial from a lake sediment core from Germany. Once data collection was completed the students had to interpret the pollen assemblages they found using the knowledge of modern day ecosystems they gained throughout the week. On the final evening they presented their work to the whole group. The final results they achieved were quite impressive.

Students presenting findings from the days work

Students presenting findings from the days work

I am very curious as to what the course will be like next year, led by Will, and how he will tweak and turn it to his liking.

 

Debating the Vera hypothesis

Debating the Vera hypothesis

 

Teaching in the field: Foundations, feedback and fun

September 16, 2014
WDG

My final teaching job for The Open University was to help deliver the “Sedimentary Rocks & Fossils in the Field” section of the Level 2 Practical Science module (SXG288) offered by the Science Faculty. I have been involved in all three presentations of this section of the SXG288 module, which will now cease to be offered, and a number of other Earth and environmental science residential schools over the last 9 years.

Showing students the rocksHaving the opportunity to engage directly with students and enthuse them face-to-face about the subject I specialise in is a privilege I have gained a lot from. Furthermore, my over-riding impression from the students I have taught is that they feel they benefit greatly from the opportunity to explore first hand the concepts and subjects which they have previously studied in books and online. Based on my experiences on “Sedimentary Rocks and Fossils”, and other modules as both a tutor and a student, I am convinced that to effectively teach geological, geographical, environmental and ecological subjects effectively an element of field-based teaching is required.

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3rd BES Macroecology SIG meeting

July 23, 2014
philjardine

Last week I went to the University of Nottingham for the third BES Macroecology Special Interest Group annual meeting. Macroecology concerns itself with ecological patterns and processes at large spatial and/or temporal scales, and so is a natural place to link palaeoecological research with that of modern ecologists and biogeographers. The conference took place over two days, and comprised a mix of 5 minute lightning talks, longer invited talks (including two keynotes by Catherine Graham of Stony Brook University, New York) and discussion sessions.

The lightning talks covered a wide range of subjects, including maximising phylogenetic diversity in the Kew Seed Bank, outstanding problems with species distribution modelling, morphological variability in Madagascan tenrecs, and latitudinal gradients in pollination mechanism. The breakout discussion groups focused on questions inspired by Edge.org, such as ‘Which ecological concepts are ready for retirement?’ and ‘What should worry macroecologists most?’; I led a group discussing ‘Should macroecology be more interdisciplinary?’ (yes, but with caution was our rather non-committal answer).

There are plans to hold next year’s Macroecology SIG meeting at the Centre for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate (CMEC) at the University of Copenhagen, and I’d like to encourage palaeoecologists to consider attending. Chatting to the delegates at the Nottingham meeting, there certainly is a growing interest in ecological change over longer timescales and the role of history in shaping modern biotas, and so palaeoecologists have a lot to offer to these sorts of research areas. Copenhagen’s got to be a nice place for a conference as well…

6th Workshop on Non-Pollen Palynomorphs

July 9, 2014
encarnimontoya

POSTER: Non-Pollen Palynomorphs in Ecuador: Starting from scratch

OUR POSTER: Non-Pollen Palynomorphs in Ecuador: Starting from scratch

Tallinn University
18-20 June 2014

Last month I had the opportunity of attending the 3-days non-pollen palynomorphs (NPP) workshop that was held at the Tallinn University, Estonia. It was perfectly organised by Tiiu Koff and Egle Avi among other members of the university, as it was a join workshop of Cladocera remains (XII Subfossil Cladocera workshop; 16-18th June) and NPP (18-20th June). Unfortunately, I was just present in the NPP workshop, so my comments will be focus on it.

With around 40 participants, we greatly enjoyed the discussions that came up about the state-of-the-art of this broad and interesting proxy and its implications for archaeology, palaeolimnology, and different aspects of ecology like human landscape management, biodiversity and conservation, or community assemblages. Current methodological problems like taxonomy, standardisation of lab techniques, etc., were also debated.

Opening and key lectures were from Bas van Geel and Emilie Gauthier, showing the development of this discipline over the last 40 years, and a great example of multi-proxy project aimed to study the human arrival and impact in Greenland respectively. Besides oral and poster presentations, last day there was a microscope session, very useful for sharing knowledge and uncertainties! In our specific case, Will, Hayley and I contributed with a poster titled “Non-pollen palynomorphs in Ecuador: starting from scratch”.

Personally, among the things I most like from the NPP meetings is the friendly and close environment, where everyone is more than glad to help others, regardless the experience. Following this feeling of small and scattered group of people dealing with the same issues, we used to do a final remark session every workshop raising the advances and inconveniences found so far, updating our NPP papers repository (managed by Antonella Miola), and addressing future directions as a group (for instance, we have now our own project in ResearchGate, thanks to Lyudmila Shumilovskikh!). In this particular workshop, I was very happy when I found out that Tallinn University has a green policy (paper free), and they replaced book abstracts etc., by iPads to follow the workshop schedule.

Although these meetings are normally biannual, next conference location and date is yet to be decided, but we hope to have the chance to join this very friendly and supporting community again. In addition, there will be a NPP session in the next European Palaeobotany and Palynology congress, tobe held in University of Padova (Italy), next August 2014. We encourage people with all kind of experience (or lack of) to attend further events.

Macroecology workshop

April 9, 2014
encarnimontoya

Phil Jardine taking charge at the macro-ecology meeting

Phil Jardine taking charge at the macro-ecology meeting

On 1st April, Alice, Encarni, Hayley and Nick attended the joint British Ecological Society Macroecology Special Interest Group and Palaeontological Association workshop held in the Natural History Museum, called Challenges in Macroecology – Scaling the Time Barrier. The workshop was co-organised by our member Phil Jardine (jointly with Victoria Herridge, Adriana de Palma and Isabel Fenton), and it was a mix between deep and shallow time, neoecologists and other researchers interested in any kind of macroecology topics.

We enjoyed so much how this one-day meeting was scheduled, with some formal approach including four plenary and lighting talks, and other informal initiatives such as speed dating and discussion groups. This way, all participants could interact with other non-directly related researchers.

The focuses of the plenary talks were related to different fields within macroecology. In this sense:

  1. Andy Purvis opened the session with the definition of macroecology, the trends and shifts of study topics it has carried out since the discipline began and ended with what macroecology is not any longer.
  2. David Jablonski explored through examples of bivalves studies how climate in time and space affects the studies of diversity dynamics, mainly addressed to three key questions: a) Extinctions, b) Latitudinal Diversity Gradients, and c) Geographical ranges.
  3. Lee Hsiang Liow encouraged us to evaluate both processes and observations, and highlighted the importance of modelling both to take into account the “unobservable” or latent truth including examples of capture-recapture and occupancy methods.
  4. Kathy Willis gave a review of the trends followed for conservation strategies since 1980s, until the development of the “ecosystems services” idea of given an economic value to biodiversity. Her main statement was focused on how palaeo-data can help in providing information to some “knowledge gaps” related to human resources including: a) trends in biomass, b) trends in nutrient cycling, c) trends in in final ecosystems services, and d) sustainability of ecosystems services.

Lighting talks were related to more specific study cases of macroecology, including specific researches about turtles, fungi, beetles, crocodiles, foraminifera or dinosaurs, in several spatial and temporal scales .

We would like to thank again Phil, Victoria, Adriana and Isabel for the great day that finished with a nice and warm wine reception sponsored by BMC Ecology. We hope to attend further events like this soon.

For more on this meeting see blog post by @protohedgehog “Macroecology – scaling the time barrier”  and storify of the twitter feed, click here.

Fieldwork in Ecuador 2013

December 13, 2013
WDG

Nick and Will with Carman (director of the Pindo Mirador biological station)

Nick and Will with Carman (director of the Pindo Mirador biological station)

Three members of the PCRG (William Gosling, Encarni Montoya and Nick Loughlin) visited Ecuador (November-December 2013) to develop collaborations with Ecuadorian institutions, recover more lake sediments, and find new potential sites for projects. Below are some photos from:

  1. Lake Pindo, 
  2. Lake Huila, and
  3. Lake Erazo.

Full reports on specific aspects of the fieldwork to follow.

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Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) annual international conference – 2013

August 30, 2013
HayleyKeen

Palaeo-people at the RGS-IBG meeting plotting future papers and grants.

Palaeo-people at the RGS-IBG meeting plotting future papers and grants. Left-right: Encarni Montoya, Joe Williams, Hayley Keen and Frazer Bird.

RGS – IBG Annul International Conference 2013
27th – 30th August, London

Yesterday (29th August) four members of the Palaeoenvironmental Change Research Group (PCRG) went down to London for the third day of the Royal Geographical Society with IBG (RGS – IBG) international conference for a day of informative talks. Two of the morning sessions were of particular interest to us with the sessions entitled ‘Human – environment interactions in the Neotropics: historical impact to current challenges’ organised by John Carson, Lizzy Rushton and Sarah Metcalfe.

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Into the next 100 years

August 28, 2013
Bryan

Sex & Bugs & Rock n Roll at INTECOL

Sex & Bugs & Rock n Roll at INTECOL: The BES sponsored tour of music festivals (http://www.besfest.org) landed at INTECOL. David Price from Science made Simple (http://www.sciencemadesimple.co.uk/) arrived on the Wednesday day afternoon to show what can be achived with professional science busking.

INTECOL 2013
18-23 August
ExCeL London

As a palaeoecologist when I came back to the UK from my post doc in Florida I started to get involved with the British Ecological Society (BES) so I could meet neoecologists. Eight years later I am still involved in the society and delighted that the theme of the society’s centenary celebration meeting focuses on change through time: Into the next 100 years. With 11 plenary lectures, dozens of parallel session, hundreds of posters and other activities including Pecha Kucha talks, workshops, field trips and trade stalls I will restrict my post to my thinking about the theme of timescales and the broader messages I got from the meeting.

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