Climate Change Impacts on Ecosystems

We are interested in climate change, and how global changes can affect local biospheres.  Ice is an excellent medium for chronicling such effects; pollen, dust, microorganisms, and even gas can be trapped for hundreds to several hundred thousand years.  By analyzing samples from regions such as the glaciers atop Kilimanjaro, where wind deposits evidence from the plains below, we can understand how desertification and other changes in the climate of the region altered the biodiversity of the local flora and fauna.

However, global climate change at the moment is causing valuable resources, such as the Kilimanjaro glaciers, to disappear.  Ice up to 11,000 years old is melting at a rapid pace, and estimates mark its complete disappearance by as soon as 2025.  We hope to save the biological record encased in these glaciers before it is too late.