Research Statement

The central idea of our work is that each location on the earth has a history. That history controls what plants and animals live at that location. We use pollen and diatom microfossils to from lakes and wetlands to reconstruct this history. For the past 3 years we have worked mainly in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan at the Sylvania Wilderness Area. Our goal has been to understand how climatic change and human disturbance have influenced ecosystems around Sylvania.

We found that the water levels of many lakes and bogs of the Sylvania Wilderness Area have increased over the last 5,000 years. This period coincides with range extensions of mesic tree species (hemlock and beech) into the Upper Peninsula. We infer that there has been an increase in available moisture in the Upper Peninsula over this time period. We invite you to examine the abstracts of our work to learn more.

Recently, we have also become interested in the history of ecosystems in southwestern Illinois and eastern Missouri. We have been using the Government Land Office Surveys to reconstruct the species composition of forests in Illinois.

Figure: Glimmerglass Bog in the Sylvania Wilderness Area

Figure: Idealized graph of climatic change since the last glacial maximum

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