Mapping Ancient Africa: Seminar 13

May 17, 2023
WDG

The thirteenth Mapping Ancient Africa online seminar will take place on 18 May 2023 (17:00 CEST). 

The seminar will be delivered via Zoom. The link for the seminar can be obtained from the MAA Slack channel or by contacting the chair of this seminar (William Gosling). If you want to know more about the Mapping Ancient Africa project visit our web pages and please do not hesitate to get in contact if you want to get involved.

INQUAlogo

Engaging people with pollen data

May 11, 2023
WDG

Educational activities include use of the Neotoma Database

On Wednesday 11 May 2023 I was delighted to give a online seminar for the African Pollen Database group on integrating palaeoecological data into educational programs. Thanks to Sarah Ivory, Chris Kiahtipes, and Alejandra Domic for inviting me and organizing this series.

I covered topics including the motivation of students, designing a MSc level course, and setting up BSc/MSc research projects. My presentation was centered around my personal experience of running courses for BSc Biology and Future Plant Studies students (Palaeoecology), and for MSc Earth Science and Biological Science students (Environments Through Time) at the University of Amsterdam. It was nice to get a wider perspective from discussion with the audience and to pick up some additional ideas and advice. If you have other thoughts on this topic please feel free to comment on this post.

The entire African Pollen Database online seminar series is now available to watch via the associated YouTube channel. So to find more click here.

APD workshop : African pollen data and education

May 4, 2023
sji15

In addition to researchers, many of us are also educators!  William Gosling (this blog’s esteemed owner) will be leading a discussion of how to use the African Pollen Database (APD) for outreach and education! Please join us Wed, May 10 at 9am EDT (time zone converter). Please email sji15@psu.edu for the zoom link and instructions.

At this workshop, Will is going to focus on:

  • Why incorporating paleoecology in education is important.
  • Some theory about pedagogy related to paleoecology.
  • Discussion of specific ideas targeted at different groups (e.g. undergraduates, informal education).

Do you have exercises and modules that you have incorporated paleoecological data into?  If so, we’d love to hear some of your ideas as well!

For more information, check out the schedule below and see past workshops here.

apd_workshop_schedule_sp23_editDownload

APD Workshop: R-Ratepol

April 19, 2023
sji15

Ondrej Mottl and Suzette Flantua will be presenting an African Pollen Database (APD) practical tutorial about working with paleoecological data in R ! Please join us Wed, April 26 at 9am EDT (time zone converter). Please email sji15@psu.edu for the zoom link and instructions.

At this workshop, you will learn to use the new Ratepol package (info here and here):

  • search for APD sites from Neotoma in R
  • begin making age models
  • calculate rates of change for vegetation from pollen records

For more information, check out the schedule below and see past workshops here.

apd_workshop_schedule_sp23Download

The Holocene

March 24, 2023
WDG

I am excited to announce that I have recently joined the “Advisory Editorial Board” of The Holocene journal. Many thanks to editor-in-chief John Matthews for the invitation. Interesting to join a very experienced team, which includes both my PhD and post-doc supervisors; the esteemed Frank Mayle and Mark Bush! I look forward to receiving interesting new papers to examine.

The Holocene journal publishes research, review and forum papers focused on environmental change during the Holocene (last 11,700 years). It encourages the submission of manuscripts with an interdisciplinary approach covering palaeoenvironments, palaeoclimate, palaeoecology, palaeohydrology, palaeopedology, palaeoceanography and geo-archaeology. So if you have a some research in this area that you are looking for a home for please check out the details aims and scope, and criteria on the journal web page, click here.

Landscape Dynamics in an era of change

March 15, 2023
WDG

The course “Landscape Dynamics in an era of change: Learning from the past to face the future” took place in the Drakensberg Mountains of South Africa between 5 and 15 March 2023. The course was run by the Graduate School for Production Ecology and Resource Conservation (PERC) and participants were drawn from universities in the Netherlands and South Africa. The main goal of the course was to investigate the past and current dynamics of the region and predict possible futures in an inter- / trans-disciplinary context. Consequently the content of the course was incredibly diverse including: geology, geomorphology, palaeoecology, cultural history, vegetation studies, soil science, farming systems and forestry. These topics were integrated into four group projects centered on invasive species, rewilding, commercial farming and small scale farming.

Island ecosystem responses to the Kuwae eruption and precipitation change over the last 1600 years, Efate, Vanuatu

March 1, 2023
WDG

Open access:

Strandberg, N.A., Sear, D.A., Langdon, P.G., Cronin, S.J., Langdon, C., Maloney, A., Bateman, S., Bishop, T., Croudace, I., Leng, M., Sachs, J.P., Prebble, M., Gosling, W.D., Edwards, M. & Nogue, S. (2023) Island ecosystem responses to the Kuwae eruption and precipitation change over the last 1600 years, Efate, Vanuatu. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 11, 1087577. DOI: 10.3389/fevo.2023.1087577

APD Workshop: R basics for paleoecologists

February 17, 2023
sji15

Chris Kiahtipes will be presenting a, African Pollen Database (APD), practical tutorial about working with paleoecological data in R for beginners! Please join us Wed, February 22 at 9am EST. Please email chris.kaihtipes@gmail.com for the zoom link.

Also, if you are interested in joining, please follow the set-up guide below before the start of the workshop in order to make sure you are ready to go and follow along in real-time during the workshop!

apd_rbasicsDownload

Data workshops in R for paleoecologists

February 10, 2023
sji15

The African Pollen Database community is hosting a series of workshops including practical data tutorials and discussions to help paleoecologists working in Africa integrate these data into research and teaching.

Our theme for Spring 2023 is “using R to understand African paleoecology”, and the schedule is posted here.

Our first workshop will be February 22 at 9am EST. Chris Kiahtipes will be provided a guided tutorial that can be followed live to help you use R and RMarkdown to develop reproducible research workflows for pollen data. This will be ~1 hour. Please register in advance by emailing Chris (chris.kiahtipes@gmail.com) to receive the zoom link and a guide to setup your workspace ahead of the workshop.

To see our launch meeting from February 8 that includes a tour of the African Pollen Database on the Neotoma Paleoecology Database, watch this video.

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