Event Details

Speaker:  Will Longo, Visiting Professor, Environmental Studies and Biology,  Macalester College

Arctic lakes are changing rapidly, making them key indicators of the effects of climate change on contemporary ecosystems. Of equal importance, Arctic lakes can preserve geologic records in their sediments that detail past climate changes and human use of the landscape. Professor Longo will talk about Lake E5 in Northern Alaska and the history recorded by “molecular fossils” stored in its 30,000-year sediment record. Investigations of Lake E5 provide new context for the temperature trends observed in global climate models and they help to date the peopling of Northwestern North America.

Will Longo is a limnologist and geochemist interested in how climate and human-induced perturbations affect the functioning of lakes. He concurrently uses the sedimentary records of lakes to reconstruct past changes in climate and biogeochemistry on seasonal to glacial-interglacial timescales. He primarily uses organic molecules preserved in sediments to carry out these investigations in environments ranging from Arctic Alaska, to coastal Massachusetts, to the Indonesian Tropics.

Refreshments provided.