PAGES - Past Global Changes

PALSEA2 French Polynesia paper

Details: Published: Monday, 29 January 2018 18:05

Members of the PALSEA2 working group recently published a paper in Nature Communications on past sea level in French Polynesia, citing the region as ideal for paleo sea-level studies for extracting accurate information on the melting history of ice sheets.

Led by Nadine Hallman, the authors reconstruct a high-resolution sea-level curve encompassing the last 6000 years based on a comprehensive study of coral microatolls, which are sensitive low-tide recorders.

Access the paper, titled "Ice volume and climate changes from a 6000 year sea-level record in French Polynesia", here.

Find out more about the PALSEA2 working group here.

More 2k papers in Clim. of Past

Details: Published: Monday, 29 January 2018 17:19

The PAGES 2k Network special issue of Climate of the Past continues to grow with recent additions covering climate variability in the subarctic and multi-proxy reconstructions of precipitation in China.

Marie Nicolle et al. use statistical and signal analyses from North Atlantic, Siberian and Alaskan regionally averaged records to investiage arctic climate variability for the last two millennia. Read their paper here.

Feng Shi et al. reconstruct the precipitation field for China for the past half millennium using 479 proxy records, including 371 tree-ring width chronologies, a tree-ring isotope chronology, and 107 drought/flood indices. Read their paper here.

Access all accepted papers in the 2k special issue, titled "Climate of the past 2000 years: global and regional syntheses", here.

Land-cover change in East Africa

Details: Published: Wednesday, 24 January 2018 09:42

Members of LandCover6k recently published a paper in Earth-Science Reviews on the cumulative effects of climate and land-use change over millennial timescales in East Africa.

Led by Rob Marchant, the authors explore the different drivers and directions of land-cover change, the associated environmental history and multiple interactions with the distribution of various cultures, technologies, and subsistence strategies through time and across space. They use archaeological and paleoenvironmental data to document change.

PAGES & NeotomaDB agreement

Details: Published: Tuesday, 23 January 2018 17:31

Archiving scientific data in a trusted repository is now becoming a requirement from many funding agencies and publishers are starting to ask that data is made publicly available.

Today, PAGES takes another step towards safe and accessible data stewardship by formally signing an agreement with the Neotoma Paleoecology Database. See their announcement here.

Neotoma joins NOAA/NCEI Paleoclimatology and PANGAEA as recommended data repositories.

Read more about PAGES Data Guidelines here.

2k teleconferences this week

Details: Published: Tuesday, 23 January 2018 11:53

The paleoscience community is invited to join a teleconference presenting the current status of the PAGES 2k Network initiative and its projects.

Anyone interested in past global changes of the last 2000 years is welcome to join. No prior registration or participation in 2k activities is necessary.

Two identical teleconferences are offered to encourage worldwide participation. Choose which one suits best.

Bark beetles: agents of change

Details: Published: Wednesday, 17 January 2018 17:18

A paper published yesterday in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, which resulted from a PAGES-supported workshop, investigates the effects of bark beetle outbreaks.

Titled "Bark beetles as agents of change in social–ecological systems", Jesse Morris and co-authors synthesize experiences from recent outbreaks to encourage knowledge transfer from previously impacted communities to potentially vulnerable locations.