PCRG January

February 12, 2014
WDG

January 2014 has been pretty mad for me but included presenting a poster at the Quaternary Research Association annual meeting, and taking on the role of chair of the British Ecological Society “Eduaction, Training and Careers Committee“.

Tardigrade egg found in Ghanaian pollen trap by Adele

Tardigrade egg found in Ghanaian pollen trap by Adele

Here is a summary of what other people have been up to:

  • Lottie Miller: submission and approval of thesis corrections (hooray), working on British Ecological Society grant application.
  • Hayley Keen: is finishing up lab work (macro charcoal – done, XRF – done, wood macrofossils – thin sectioned, awaiting identification, pollen – just 4 more samples!); and dealing with minor review revisions to first submitted paper (hooray).
  • Frazer Bird: finished the data collection for two Ecuadorian lakes (Banos and Pindo) and will hopefully begin to write up this data soon; attended the NERC stats course (very useful; would advise everyone to try and get on it).
  • Nick Loughlin: has split and logged the sediment cores recovered from Lake Huila (Ecuador) during recent fieldwork, and begun preparing the samples for pollen.
  • Adele Julier: has been preparing pollen trap samples from Ghana and  learning tropical pollen.
  • Emily Sear: has mostly been on holiday and we are still waiting for the post card! She has also been working at getting results that make sense from the MS2.
  • Phil Jardine:   has been oxidising spores to see what it does to the chemistry, generating FTIR data with the oxidised samples and starting the numerical analysis, and editing film footage from the 2013 Ghana trip.
  • Encarni Montoya: has been doing pollen lab and analysing pollen from Baños, and comparing the midges trends from Pindo and Baños with Frazer.
  • Wes Fraser: Reported back to Royal Society on finding from research grant – paper containing exciting results to follow in next couple of months.
Some pollen from Adele's pollen traps in Ghana

Some pollen from Adele’s pollen traps in Ghana

We have also had 4 papers published with 2014 dates on them:

  • Cárdenas, M.L., Gosling, W.D., Pennington, R.T., Poole, I., Sherlock, S.C. & Mothes, P. (2014) Forests of the tropical eastern Andean flank during the middle Pleistocene. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 393: 76-89. doi: 10.1016/j.palaeo.2013.10.009
  • Fraser, W.T., Watson, J.S., Sephton, M.A., Lomax, B.H., Harrington, G., Gosling, W.D. & Self, S. (2014) Changes in spore chemistry and appearance with increasing maturity. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology, 201, 41-46. doi:10.1016/j.revpalbo.2013.11.001
  • Miller, C.S. & Gosling, W.D. (2014) Quaternary forest associations in lowland tropical West Africa. Quaternary Science Reviews, 84, 7-25. doi: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2013.10.027
  • Sayer, E.J., Featherstone, H.C. & Gosling, W.D. (2014) Sex & Bugs & Rock n Roll: getting creative about public engagement. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 29, 65-67. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2013.12.008

PCRG September

October 2, 2013
WDG

Section of fossil wood from Ecuador

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.

Encarni Montoya:

  • Lake Pindo: We have finally the results of 6 samples radiocarbon dated from NRCF through our collaborator Dr Pauline Gulliver, and we have sent 4 more to “range find” the key interval of interests for the FORSENS project. We have started the midges’ analysis although it seems this going to be focused to the upper 4 meters of sediment. We would like to discern possible preservation issues in tropical records for this proxy. Some samples for a preliminary screening looking for diatoms ahve been collected and sent to the new FORSENS collaborator Teresa Vegas-Vilarrúbia. MS samples have been also collected for the first three drives and we hope to run this analysis next month.
  • Lake Banos: We have started the pollen prep. for the upper section of the record.
  • Management tasks: We are now ready for the tropical record Lake Marcacocha pollen prep., collaborating with an ongoing project lead by Alex Chepstow-Lusty. On a different topic, I have started the organisation of department seminars, so I would like to highlight if you have any potential speaker, please contact me.
  • Publications: a co-authorship in a paper published in Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics authored by Valentí Rull and his research group in the Botanical Institute of Barcelona is now available on line (click here)

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!”

PCRG August

September 4, 2013
WDG

Will's BES T-shirt logo swabbed at Greenman

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:

  • Hayley producing a revised full draft of her pollen counting methodology manuscript,
  • Frazer starting with the first tentative attempts to apply his chironomid training data set to fossil chironomid records,
  • Phil trialing inverted microscopes and training on the FTIR,
  • Encarni plotting field work in Ecuador (more travel for November-December),
  • William seeming to spend alot of time working on research strategy for the faculty, and thinking about writing teaching material for the ongoing revison of our level 2 environmental science module, and
  • most excitingly of all, Lottie submitting her PhD thesis! WELL DONE LOTTIE.

PCRG July

August 2, 2013
WDG

Fluctuation in woodland resources in the high Andes have varied through the last 5000 years and influenced human societal development.

Woodland resources in the high Andes have varied through the last 5000 years and influenced human societal development. The relationship between people and natural resources in the Andes is explored in the recently published Gosling & Williams (2013); http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1177/0959683613496296

In July we have managed to get a number of individual blog posts out so teaching activity on summer school, publications and conference reports have already been covered. Behind the scenes progress in the lab has continued despite the hot weather:

  • Frazer has commenced writing of his Chironomid training data set paper, and analysis of a fossil chironomid record.
  • Hayley has been plugging away at the analysis of pollen from Mera, and has got the first of her wood macrofossil samples prepared for thin sectioning (fingers crossed next month we may start to get some identifications on these!).
  • Lottie, Natalie and Bryan are keeping their supervisors very busy with reading material as they continue a pace with writing up.
  • Phil is setting up the Bosumtwi pollen chemistry project (we now have an offical grant code!) and is settling in; hopefully he should be moved down to MK very soon!
  • And Encarni is multi tasking and organising everything as usual 🙂

Dead heads

July 30, 2013
encarnimontoya

DeadHeads12th International Workshop on Subfossils Chironomids
10-13th June, New Forest, UK

Last month Frazer and Encarni attended the 3-days “dead heads” workshop that was held at the Beaulieu Hotel , in the New Forest National Park (UK). It was perfectly organised by Pete Langdon and Steve Brooks,  and was a great opportunity for both of us who are relatively new to the midges’ community. With around 40 participants from Europe, America and Asia, we greatly enjoyed the discussions that came up about the state-of-the-art for this interesting proxy and the implications for palaeoclimatology, palaeolimnology, and different aspects of ecology like conservation, restoration or community assemblages. In addition, useful topics such as current methodological problems with age-depth model uncertainties, the usefulness and limitations of transfer functions, and taxonomy were also debated.

Besides oral and poster presentations, the workshop offered several tutorials during the afternoons, key amoung these were an introduction to R carried out by Richard Telford and Steve Juggins, and taxonomic support for head capsules ID leaded by Steve Brooks and Oliver Heiri.

In our specific case, Frazer contributed with an oral presentation titled “Understanding the modern distributions and ecological tolerances of the Neotropical Chironomidae fauna: The potential as a palaeoecological proxy” base on his PhD research. We were both so glad to make contact with other people working in South America, in particular Julieta Massaferro and Alberto Araneda presented very interesting data from Argentina and Chile.

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. We encourage people with all kind of experience (or lack of) to attend any further events.

PCRG February

March 1, 2013
WDG

Four new workstations installed in the Past Environmental Change microscope lab

Four new workstations installed in the Past Environmental Change microscope lab

Excitement in February saw the arrival of a new research grant within the PCRG, to look at pollen and spore chemistry from Lake Bosumtwi (watch this space for new post-doc and PhD studentship positions), and (just in time) the expansion of benches in the microscope lab which will ensure that the new people will have spaces to sit in! In addition, we had a paper published with long time friends and collaborators at the University of Leeds; Roucoux et al. (2013).

Despite the disruption of the lab refit Hayley and Frazer have been cracking on with pollen and chironomid analysis. Encarni and Frazer returned from field work in Ecuador and half the samples have so far made it back to The Open University; we now wait with anticipation for customs to release the other box!

Four shiny new benches from the other side

Four shiny new workstations from the other side – woo

Meanwhile I have been working on exam questions for the Geological Record of Environmental Change module (S369), interviewing prospective PhD candidates for the October 2013 start projects and have been on a training course to learn about the Vitae support for research student training.

PCRG publications 2012

February 15, 2013
WDG

Bush, M.B. & Gosling, W.D. (2012) Environmental change in the humid tropics and monsoonal regions. The SAGE Handbook of Environmental Change (ed. by J.A. Matthews, P.J. Bartlein, K.R. Briffa, A.G. Dawson, A. De Vernal, T. Denham, S.C. Fritz and F. Oldfield), pp. 113-140. SAGE, London.

Mosblech, N.A.S., Bush, M.B., Gosling, W.D., Hodell, D., Thomas, L., Van Calsteren, P., Correa-Metrio, A., Valencia, B.G., Curtis, J. & Van Woesik, R. (2012) North Atlantic forcing of Amazonian precipitation during the last ice age. Nature Geoscience, 5, 817-820

Williams, J.J., Brooks, S.J. & Gosling, W.D. (2012) Response of chironomids to late Pleistocene and Holocene environmental change in the eastern Bolivian Andes. Journal of Paleolimnology, 48, 485-501

PCRG January

January 31, 2013
WDG

BES centenary logo

We are taking the BES festival of ecology to music festivals in 2013! “Tell me when”… you’d better read the blog!

January seems to have flown past and has been another active month. With group members variously involved in:

Continue Reading

Fieldwork: Papallacta and Cosanga

September 15, 2012
WDG

The second part of our Ecuadorian expedition took in lakes and sections close to the towns of Papallacta and Cosanga. The variation in climatic conditions was marked as we experienced first hand the transition from freezing fog and driving rain to burning sun and heat within a few tens of kilometers as we travelled from >4000 m down to around 1000 m elevation.

Vinillos Section

Sampling the sedimentary section at Vinillos was hampered by a tropical downpour. Sediments recovered from here include volcanic ash, mud slide deposits including large wood macrofossils and fine grained organic sediments probably deposited in still water environments.

Antenas near Cujuca

Preparing to recover a short core from a pond near the antenas at Cujuca. Short cores will be used for Chironomid analysis.

Tomorrow we will attempt to recover short cores from two more lakes. Then our final few days here in Ecuador will be spent visiting partners and packing up.

PCRG July

August 3, 2012
WDG

MKHalf-2012

PCRG members taking part in the Milton Keynes NSPCC Half Marathon, 8 July (left to right: Charlotte Miller, Wesley Fraser and William Gosling)

I have been really excited with the increase in the number of posts and various contributions to this blog over the last month or so. So thanks to everyone who has contributed. The excellent content allows me to focus on just a few research and teaching events which have not been previously covered.

1) Welcome to Wesley Fraser who has joined us officilally as a visiting postdoc for a few months. We hope to develop a paper and another grant submission looking at pollen/spore chemistry during this time; for further details see “Do plants wear sunblock” post.

2) Well done to Frazer and Hayley for performing well in their end of year 1 mini-vivas. Both projects are progressing well and we are all looking forward to field work at the end of the month. Hopefully most of the prepartation and equipment are now in place…

3) Potential for more exiting collaborations was also developed at two meetings. The first, at the Natural History Museum and, in conjunction with long term collaborator Steve Brooks was with old friends Mick Frogley (Sussex) and Alex Chepstow-Lusty. Both Mick and Alex taught me when I was at Cambridge and it would be super exiting to develop a new collaboration with them looking at Chironomids in Andean lakes. The second was at the Univesity of Nottingham as I took part in a UK Tropical Peatlands meeting which brought together ecologists and palaeoecologists from Nottingham, Leeds, Leicester and The OU. The aim of the meeting was to coordinate papers and grant applications.

4) At the end of July beginning of August I taught on the “Sedimentary Rocks and Fossils in the field” topic for the new Practical Science, Earth & Environment (SXG288) module which The OU now offers. Longridge Towers School (no children around this time of year) provided the perfect base for investigating the sedimentary geology of the region. The small group of students had the opportunity to make field observations and test hypotheses related to past environmental change. Everyone was very excited to find numerous fossils and interesting sedimentary structres and had fun trying to work out what they all meant! Congratulations to Angela Coe for putting together this great event.

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