Earth's climate is changing faster than ever before. To understand what lies ahead, our lab looks to the past which offers a history of natural experiments many timescales. From ice ages that allowed mammoths to thrive to the hothouse climates that allowed dinosaurs to roam the Earth, these ancient climates reveal how our planet responds to change. Our research group studies these dramatic shifts in climate throughout Earth's history and how forests and ecosystems have adapted to them. We are particularly interested in identifying the dynamics of past climate changes which involves combing empirical evidence of past climate changes alongside physics-based models. Based in the Department of Geography at the University of Georgia, we conduct this research using state-of-the-art analytical facilities at the Center for Applied Isotope Studies.

We explore these questions through three complementary approaches:

• Analyzing ancient molecules preserved in sediments to reconstruct past climates.
• Using climate models to understand the forces that drove past climate changes.
• Synthesizing global records to reveal how forests adapted to changing temperatures and rainfall.