15:00-15:30 Frank Wesselingh & the PRIDE team How high can you get? Mountain uplift driving diversification in Pontocaspian lakes before humans bring down the unique aquatic biota?
15:30-16:00 Christiaan van Baak Mediterranean-Paratethys connectivity during the late Miocene to recent
– 16:00-16:15 tea/coffee break –
16:15-17:15 Keith Richards Studies in Caspian palynology: Vegetation, climate and sea level change
Zoe and William just after the graduation ceremony (UvA)
Two students (Zoe van Kemenade and Tessa Driessen) have recently completed projects looking at past environmental change on Samoa working in the Research Group of Palaeoecology & Landscape Ecology at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). Zoe’s project, part of her BSc Future Planet Studies (major Earth Sciences) at UvA, was entitled “A multi‐proxy analysis on the effect of climate and human activity on the environment of Samoa during the Holocene” and investigated charcoal, macro-fossils, and algae. Tessa’s project, “Biodiversity, fire and human dynamics on Samoa over the last 9200 years”, was completed as an internship during her MSc in Environmental Biology at Utrecht University (UU) that was co-supervised by Rike Wagner-Cremer. Tessa focused on the fossil pollen record to reconstruct past vegetation change. Both projects were conducted in cooperation with Jon Hassel and David Sear (both University of Southampton) who provided access to the Samoan sediments; for more on the Southampton Pacific Islands projects check out their blog Palaeoenvironmental Laboratory at the University of Southampton.
The results from both projects, and work by the University of Southampton team, will be presented at this years GTO conference (European conference of tropical ecology) in Gottingen next week.
William giving his personal view on the work of Tessa at her gradation ceremony (UU)
Miller, C.S. (2014) 520,000 years of environmental change in West Africa. PhD Thesis, Department of Environment, Earth & Ecosystems, The Open University.
Han, F., Rydin, C., Bolinder, K., Dupont-Nivet, G., Abels, H.A., Koutsodendris, A., Zhang, K. & Hoorn, C. (2016) Steppe development on the Northern Tibetan Plateau inferred from Paleogene ephedroid pollen. Grana 55, 71-100. doi: 10.1080/00173134.2015.1120343
Just published two articles in a special issue on Gnetales:
Bolinder, K., Norback Ivarsson, L., Humphreys, A.M., Ickert-Bond, S., Han, F., Hoorn, C. & Rydin, C. (2016) Pollen morphology of Ephedra (Gnetales) and its evolutionary implications. Grana 55, 24-51. DOI: 10.1080/00173134.2015.1066424
Posted on behalf of Barry Lomax Linnean Society Palynology Specialist Group meeting Tuesday 24 November 2015
Provisional program
10:30 – 11:00 Barry Thomas (Aberystwyth University). Ecological interpretations of Asturian and Cantabrian lycophyte microspore floras of the Variscan Foreland and the Appalachian Province of the Central Coalfields of the U.S.A
11:00 – 11:30 Adele Julier (Open University). Can FTIR spectroscopy be used to identify grass pollen?
14:00 – 14:30 Viktória Baranyi1 (Oslo Universiy). Morphology and wall-ultrastructure of Froelichsporites traversei, an enigmatic sporomorph from the Late Triassic in North America.
14:30 – 15:00 Hannah Banks (Royal Botanic Gardens Kew). Functional and phylogenetically useful structures in Caesalpinioid legume pollen.
15:00 – 15:30 Sam Slater (Sheffield University). A quantitative analysis of Middle Jurassic vegetation dynamics based on dispersed spore/pollen assemblages from the Ravenscar Group, North Yorkshire, UK.
Afternoon tea 15:30 – 16:00
16:00 – 16:30 Alex Askew (Sheffield University). A palynological investigation of the Middle Devonian of northern Spain: hunting for the Kačák event.
16:30 – 17:00 Phil Jardine (Open University). A new use for old pollen: reconstructing past solar irradiance using pollen chemistry.
Wine reception
To register please contact Barry Lomax (Group secretary)
Posted on behalf of Thomas Giesecke:
EUROPEAN POLLEN DATABASE
Meeting and training workshops
1-3/06/2016
Aix-en-Provence, France
We offer exciting keynote lectures, an extensive poster session to showcase your research, and two days of training with experts in software, databases, and modelling.
We want your opinion on how to develop the European Pollen Database (EPD) to make it a better resource for research, education, and data storage.
NO registration fee
Workshop topics include:
Plotting and archiving palaeoecological data, using Tilia and Neotoma
Charcoal analysis software and database
How to use modern surface samples for ‘analogue’ reconstructions of the past
Bermúdez, M.A., Hoorn, C., Bernet, M., Carrillo, E., van der Beek, P.A., Garver, J.I., Mora, J.L. & Mehrkian, K. (2015) The detrital record of late-Miocene to Pliocene surface uplift and exhumation of the Venezuelan Andes in the Maracaibo and Barinas foreland basins. Basin Research. DOI: 10.1111/bre.12154
Ecology of the past 