Global Climate Change: Past and Future - the Panelists
Dr. Thure Cerling
Department of Geology & Geophysics and Department of Biology
University of Utah
Title: Global Climate Change: Some Thoughts from a Geological Perspective
Abstract
Global climate change is one of the most important problems facing humankind. Geoscientists have a unique perspective because so much of the geological record concerns Nature's response to climate change. The public is often confused about the terminology, the time scale and evolutionary response to climate change, both in the distant past and in relation to the near future. It is the responsibility of scientists to enter the fray and help educate the public about these issues.
Biography
Thure Cerling is Distinguished Professor of Biology and Distinguished Professor of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Utah. His principal research interests involve using isotope biogeochemistry to understand modern and past species and environments and in applying isotopes to environmental issues. This approach includes work in conservation biology, animal physiology and studies of dietary changes in mammalian lineages over millions of years. His research group has studied the global expansion of warm-season (C4) grasses between 5 and 8 million years ago and its effects on mammalian evolution. He has done extensive field work in North America, Africa and Asia. Dr. Cerling is a member of the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Read more about Dr. Cerling.
Dr. Jack Williams
Department of Geography and Center for Climatic Research
University of Wisconsin — Madison
Title: Plant Species and Community Responses to Climate Change: What Can We Learn from the Last Deglaciation?
Abstract
The last deglaciation (ca. 18,000 to 6,000 years ago) has many parallels to the 21st century: atmospheric CO2 concentrations and global mean temperatures were increasing rapidly, mountain glaciers and ice sheets were wasting away and sea level was rising. These changes to the physical system had profound biological consequences, including the massive migrational shifts of many species, disaggregation of some communities and the emergence of novel communities and, in some cases, species extinctions. We can use fossil records from this time period (along with paleoclimatic records and climate models) to address questions of fundamental importance to global-change scientists, policymakers and land managers. In this talk, I will review three: (1) How rapidly can species distributions respond to climate change? (2) Why do novel communities arise, and under what conditions? (3) How do we resolve the conundrum that surprisingly few species became extinct during the last deglaciation?
Biography
Dr. Jack Williams is an associate professor in the Department of Geography and Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin — Madison. His research interests center on vegetational responses and feedbacks to climate change, with emphasis on studying late-Quaternary vegetation dynamics and the implications for forecasting ecological responses to 21st century climate change. Dr. Williams serves on the Governing Boards of the International Biogeography Society and the North American Pollen Database. Read more about Dr. Williams’ research and other activities.
Dr. Elizabeth Hadly
Biology Department
Stanford University
Title: Mammalian response to environments of the Cenozoic
Abstract
The environments of the last 65 million years have witnessed development of the immense diversity and dynamics of mammals. Episodes of environmental change, in particular, serve as valuable contexts for observing mammalian responses to climate, made more salient because of modern global change. Climatic change has catalyzed changes to the abundances of populations, their genetic diversity and morphologic variation, and alteration of the geographic ranges of individual species. Within communities of mammals these adjustments have resulted in intercontinental immigration events, speciation and extinction, each of which influence patterns of community stability, functional turnover, biotic turnover and mammalian diversity. Ultimately all these processes trace to events experienced by populations. However, the sum of these processes emerges as patterns above the species level, where shared life-history and evolutionary history permit generalizations about mammalian response to environmental change. In the context of modern global change, these generalizations provide us with harbingers of things to come.
Biography
Dr. Elizabeth Hadly is an associate professor at Stanford University. Her research examines how ecological perturbations link or decouple levels of biological organization from ecosystems to species to populations to genes, which is central to understanding how organisms exist, evolve and become extinct. A unique aspect of her approach is the focus on the decadal to millennial time scale, a scale that is little studied, although it is integral to understanding links between ecology and evolution. Dr. Hadly's field research involves excavation of finely stratified Quaternary vertebrate fossil sites and collection of modern specimens in North America, South America and India. Laboratory work includes morphological and DNA analyses to extend the level of investigation to the population and genetic levels. Ongoing projects at the landscape to continental scale include study of the ecological and evolutionary factors influencing biological diversity of temperate terrestrial vertebrate faunas in North and South America. Read more about Dr. Hadly.