To see a world in a grain of sand: Yucatan climate recorded in microfossils

Current climate change is the product of warming on a global scale, but it is regional climate that dictates local weather patterns and rainfall. Models of regional climate are useful in predicting changes to future resource availability but are only as good as the data on which they are based, and human measurements have only been around for a relatively short time. Geologists turn to geochemistry to extend climate records into the past. This talk will take you through the clever techniques used on shelled organisms to link the mass of single atoms to large-scale climate events impacting rainfall. The Yucatan Peninsula provides excellent field sites to study changing climate and its impact on communities past and present from the ancient Mayans to modern tourists and ecosystems.

Speaker: Kyle Broach, UC Santa Cruz