Long-term Environmental Change

Catalog description

Through its history the Earth system has experienced large climatic fluctuations and has undergone periods of glacial expansion followed by warming trends. The understanding of the links between climate and ecosystems of the past (million of years) can inform on current and future climate changes. However, in much shorter time frames (hundred of years) anthropogenic activity has caused dramatic and unprecedented changes in the global climate whose effect on ecosystem processes and function is still largely unknown. This course will expose the students to a number of techniques used to reconstruct past climate, with particular emphasis on the use of isotopes. Recent warming trends will be investigated with particular focus on the ecosystems' response to current and predicted global change.