March 25, 2021
Open access:
McMichael, C., Witteveen, N.H., Scholz, S., Zwier, M., Prins, M.A., Lougheed, B.C., Mothes, P. & Gosling, W.D. (2021) 30,000 years of landscape and vegetation dynamics in a mid-elevation Andean valley. Quaternary Science Reviews 258, 106866.
March 24, 2021
Mark Bush is looking to recruit a PhD researcher to the “Neotropical Palaeoecology Research Group” at Florida Institute of Technology.Applications are invited from qualified and highly-motivated students for an exciting PhD studentship in the areas of paleoecology and community ecology of South American lowland rainforests.
October 18, 2019
Date: 18th of October 2019
Location: Institute for Biodiversity & Ecosystem Dynamics, Science Park Amsterdam
Organisers: Dr. Carina Hoorn and Dr. Crystal McMichael (University of Amsterdam)
Programme
14:00-14:10 WELCOME & OPENING
15:30-16:00: TEA
17:00: DRINKS
For full details visit the Treub web site here.
May 31, 2019
Vegetation responses to late Holocene climate changes in an Andean forest
By Klaas Land (currently studying MSc Biological Sciences (Ecology & Evolution) at the University of Amsterdam.
The discussion during the APC meeting on the 19th of March was on the paper by Schiferl et al. (2018), a very recent study on the climatic shifts in the late Holocene and their effects on the South American tropics. The study had analysed a core going back about 3800 years from Lake Palotoa, which was in the Andean foothills (1370m elevation). They found that subtle changes to the fossil pollen record could be identified around the estimated periods for the Little Ice Age (LIA) and Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA). The focus in the paper Continue Reading
May 29, 2019
Huisman, S.N.*, Bush, M.B. & McMichael, C.N.H. (2019) Four centuries of vegetation change in the mid-elevation Andean forests of Ecuador. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany. DOI: 10.1007/s00334-019-00715-8
* conducted the research presented in this paper during her MSc Biological Sciences at the University of Amsterdam.
May 8, 2019
University of Amsterdam MSc Biological Sciences (Ecology & Evolution) researcher Britte Heijink presents her research at the 2019 Harold W. Brons Symposium (Climate Change Institute at University of Maine).
Fast forward to 1 hours 24 min if you want to see just her talk:
May 31, 2018
Palynologische Kring meeting
Date: 31/05/2018
Location: Institute for Biodiversity & Ecosystem Dynamics, University of Amsterdam
Organizer: Carina Hoorn
Program
May 30, 2018
Open access for 50 days with this link: https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1X6ja7tFrJFBkG
Castilla-Beltrán, A., Hooghiemstra, H., Hoogland, M.L.P., Pagán-Jiménez, J., van Geel, B., Field, M.H., Prins, M., Donders, T., Malatesta, E.H., Hung, J.U., McMichael, C.H., Gosling, W.D. & Hofman, C.L. Columbus’ footprint in Hispaniola: a paleoenvironmental record of Indigenous and Colonial impacts on the landscape of the central Cibao Valley, northern Dominican Republic. Anthropocene. DOI: 10.1016/j.ancene.2018.05.003
April 23, 2018
Hiking though the jungle in Panama (San Lorenzo)
Hi All!
My name is Veerle, and I am in my first year of the Master in Biological Sciences, Ecology & Evolution track, at the University of Amsterdam. I also completed my BSc Biology at the University of Amsterdam, specializing in Ecology and Global Change. One of my favorite courses during my BSc was Palaeoecology, which led to a BSc research project with William Gosling and Crystal McMichael on the farming history in the Netherlands. I really enjoyed this project and it made me even more interested in palaeoecology. This year I have gotten the amazing opportunity to do another project with Crystal McMichael…. including a field expedition together with Britte Heijink and Nina Witteveen to Panama and Colombia! This was an amazing experience with a lot of fun, mud, insect repellent and most of all really nice cores! I am super excited to tell you about my field experiences, so soon we will post another blog about that!
Collecting the soil
Now that we’re back in Amsterdam, I’m analyzing phytoliths from Gigante (Panama) to reconstruct the fire and vegetation history. I’m especially interested in past agriculture and forest management to see if there were humans present in the area and how they affected the vegetation. Hopefully I can show you some nice results about that in the future!
Cheers,
Veerle
April 6, 2018
My name is Nina Witteveen and I’m doing a research project for my master (Biological Science) with Crystal McMichael and William Gosling. I’m analyzing phytoliths to reconstruct the vegetation changes of Campo Libre (Napo, Ecuador) of the past 
30,000 years. It is so exciting to count phytoliths of such an old age!
Simon Scholz is currently doing a charcoal analysis and two years ago, Maaike Zwier performed a physical analysis in the sediment. With all these results combined, I will investigate how climate changes and human influence have changed the vegetation of Campo Libre. Hopefully this research will give more insight into the effect of a changing climate on this biodiversity hotspot!
I’ve completed my thesis for the Biology bachelor at the UvA under the supervision of Crystal and Will. Together with other students we performed phytoliths, pollen and charcoal analysis from sediment of Well-Aaijen (Limburg, the Netherlands). More specifically, I’ve looked at the vegetational changes during the transition from hunter-gatherers to farmers through pollen and phytolith analysis. I’m very happy to be working with Crystal and Will again, this time in a more tropical setting!
In January of this year, I travelled to Panama with Veerle Vink, Britte Heijink and Crystal McMichael. It was a great experience! Surrounded by Howler Monkeys, we made our way through streams and Geonoma palms to collect soil surface samples for future phytolith analysis. Definitely a highlight of my fieldwork so far! I am now back in the microscope lab, and always up for a (paleo)chat 🙂
Ecology of the past 