The University of Minnesota's QP Minor program supports a seminar series during the academic year featuring local and invited speakers. Seminars take place on Wednesday nights at 7:30 (with refreshments at 7) at Herb Wright's home, 1426 Hythe St., Saint Paul. Directions are as follows:
From the Saint Paul campus, cross Cleveland Ave. on Buford. Follow Buford west 2 blocks, then turn left onto Hythe. 1426 is halfway down the block on your left.
From the Minneapolis campus, take University east to Raymond Ave. in St. Paul. Go north on Raymond (which turns into Cleveland), then turn left on Buford. After 2 blocks, turn left onto Hythe. 1426 is halfway down the block on your left. Or, take the inter-campus shuttle to the St. Paul student union and follow the directions from above (it's a short walk).
NEW:
2008 QP Short CoursePrevious seminar series
Sediment Fingerprinting in Terrestrial Environments: Impacts in Science and Society
Download course materials here
May 14, 15, 16, 9 AM - 4 PM
University of Minnesota - Minneapolis campusMay 14: Joe Rosenbaum - US Geological Survey, Denver (environmental magnetism)
May 15: Josef Werne - Large Lakes Observatory, University of Minnesota - Duluth (organic geochemistry)
May 16: Patrick Belmont - St. Anthony Falls Laboratory, University of Minnesota (cosmogenic nuclides)This free, noncredit short course is directed toward students and faculty from Geology, Geography, Ecology, Anthropology, Soil Science, and other disciplines, who wish to engage in a discussion on sediment tracing in terrestrial environments. Invited speakers Dr. Joe Rosenbaum, Dr. Josef Werne, and Dr. Patrick Belmont will talk about the sources, transport, and deposition of sediments in lakes and rivers using techniques such as environmental magnetism, organic geochemistry, and cosmogenic nuclides. Together we will explore multiple ways in which fingerprinting methods can be used to reconstruct past climatic and ecological changes, and the impacts of increasing sediment loading and deposition rates on society and management practices today.
For registration or more information contact:
Ioan Lascu (lascu003 at umn.edu)
Dylan Blumentritt (blum0123 at umn.edu)
download poster (8 MB pdf, letter size color)Associated one-day short course in initial core description (ICD)
LacCore manager Amy Myrbo will offer a hands-on workshop on initial description of lake sediment cores on Tuesday, May 13, the day before the QP workshop. Please contact Amy directly (amyrbo at umn.edu) for registration or more information, or see the LRC education page. There is a $25 charge for this short course to cover lunch and supplies.
Spring 2008
Fall 2007
January 30: Cathy Whitlock, Professor, Montana State University
Holocene fire-climate linkages in the western North America and southern South Americanote switch in schedule for next two weeks:
February 6: Shawn Schottler, Senior Scientist, Science Museum of MN; Saint Croix Watershed Research Station
Fingerprinting current sources of sediment to the Minnesota River and Lake PepinFebruary 13: Jason McLachlan, Assistant Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Notre Dame University
Integrating fossil pollen records with genetic and population perspectives on forest changeFebruary 20: Randy Calcote, Research Scientist, Limnological Research Center, University of Minnesota
Ecological responses to late-Holocene climateFebruary 27: Julio Betancourt, Senior Scientist; Professor, U.S. Geological Survey and University of Arizona
An Environmental History of the Atacama Desert: Nature's Experiment at the Edge of LifeMarch 5: Peter deMenocal, Associate Professor, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University
Deglacial history of the Atlantic ITCZ: ocean, atmosphere, and cultural signatures of rapid climate changeMarch 12: Kay Behrensmeyer, Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology, Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History
A Million Years of Environmental Change in the Olorgesailie Basin, Kenya
September 17 (note special time): Wally Broecker, Newberry Professor, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia UniversitySpring 2007
Putting the Younger Dryas in Perspective
Seminar will be held Monday Sept 17 from 12:30-1:30 in Pillsbury Hall 209October 3: Brigitta Ammann, Professor emerita, University of Bern
Biotic responses to abrupt late-glacial climatic changes in a Swiss lake as tuned to the Greenland isotope recordOctober 10: Kieran McNulty, Assistant Professor, Anthropology, University of Minnesota
What we know and don't know about the paleoecology of Rusinga Island, KenyaOctober 17: Michael Tweiten, Ph.D. candidate, University of Wisconsin-Madison
A 2000 year history of jack pine budworm outbreaks on the Northwestern Wisconsin Sand PlainOctober 24: Kathryn Hoppe, Research Associate, Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, University of Washington
Using isotopic analyses of ancient bison as paleoecologic and paleoclimatic proxiesNovember 7: Ed Swain, Research Scientist, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency
Title: TBANovember 14: Michael Wilson, Assistant Professor, Anthropology & EEB; Associate Director, The Jane Goodall Institute's Center for Primate Studies, University of Minnesota
The evolution of intergroup relations in chimpanzees and humans
May short course and spring semester journal club
Phenology and changing seasonality of climate: implications for ecology, hydrology, and civilization. Past, Present, Future.This free, noncredit short course aims to engage folks from Geology, Geography, Ecology, Anthropology, and other disciplines, to explore ideas about environmental responses to changes in climatic seasonality, and the significance of these phenomena to our study of Quaternary paleorecords. The short course will take place May 9-11, 2007, on the Minneapolis campus of the University of Minnesota.
Despite coming from various departments and disciplines, there are many research themes and problems that we all encounter. We’d like to spend this spring focusing on one of these topics: changes in the seasonality of climate. From how to recognize and interpret seasonal shifts in paleorecords, to the phenological implications for modern ecology, or the impact of seasonal shifts on human evolution and modern human societies, this is a topic we all need to consider in looking at climate and ecology past, present, and future.
The seminars this spring are going to take the form of ‘journal club’ discussions, rather than lectures. We have invited speakers from several departments at the University to choose papers they see as important, interesting, or provocative in addressing the seasonality of climate, and shifts in seasonality and phenology past and future. The speaker will give a short introduction on the topic, then open the floor to discussion of the paper, how it might apply to your own research, and future research directions in the field. Papers will be posted and distributed in advance of the meetings.
We’ll end the semester with a short course on May 9-11 offering lectures, discussions, and hands-on practicals addressing these same issues with invited guests Eric Grimm (Illinois State Museum) and Masaki Hayashi (University of Calgary) among others.
Journal club speakers/discussion leaders:
March 28: Kathy Klink (Geography) on seasonality of climate, how that could change, how we define seasons, overall introduction to climate component
April 4: Jim Almendinger (SCWRS and Geology) on hydrology and seasonality
April 11: Martha Tappen (Anthropology) on humans and changes in seasonality over the Quaternary
April 18: Xianfeng Wang (Geology) on seasonality and the ice core isotope records and on changes in seasonality of climate on long long geologic time scales
April 25: Kurt Kipfmueller (Geography) on tree ring records, and an introduction to phenology
May 2: Rebecca Montgomery (Forest Resources) on fisheries, humans, seasonality, and phenology (past few hundred year time scale)If you would like to be added to the QP email listserv (to receive journal club papers and updates to the schedule), please contact Amy Myrbo. For any other questions about the short course and journal club, contact Anna Henderson.
On May 8, 2007, the day before the Phenology short course, staff of the LRC LacCore Facility will offer a one-day short course on initial core description (ICD) of lake sediments. Please see our Education page for details or contact Amy Myrbo.
Fall 2006
September 20: I know what I did last summer: Come tell others about your summer field work and be part of QP semester planning!September 27: Gabriel Bowen, Purdue University
Prospects for a high-carbon future inferred from Earth's pastOct 4: Noah Diffenbaugh, Purdue University
Title TBAOct 11: Gilbert Tostevin, University of Minnesota
Comparing cultural evolution with biological evolution in Late Pleistocene HomininsOct 18: Peter Clark, Oregon State University
Mechanisms for millennial-scale climate variability during marine isotope stage 3: Heinrich events, see saws, and Pacific teleconnectionsNov 1: Patrick DeDeckker, Australian National University
The role of the Indo-Pacific warm pool on global climate change during the QuaternaryNov 8: Ana Moreno Caballud, Limnological Research Center, Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow
A 13 kyr record of the tropical Andes: the Lago Chungará sequencecancelled:
George Kukla, Columbia University, LDEO
An inconvenient truth: Last Glacial started with global warmingNov 15: Cary Mock, University of South Carolina
Historical climatology in paleoenvironmental researchNov 29: Daniel Schrag, Harvard University
A theory for rapid climate change in the North AtlanticDec 6: Julia Cole, University of Arizona
Mechanisms of climate change in the southwestern US inferred from speleothem records: Implications for past abrupt change and future drought
Spring 2006
2/22/06: John Soderberg, Lab Manager, University of Minnesota Department of Anthropology
John's research interests include zooarchaeology, historical archaeology, and the application of three-dimensional scanning technology to artifact analysis.
Title: "Cattle, Bogs, and the Collapse of Clonmacnoise Monastery in 13th Century Ireland"3/1/06: Evan Larson, Graduate Student, University of Minnesota Department of Geography/Dendroecology Lab
Evan's interests include biogeography, dendrochronology, paleoclimatology, landscape ecology, fire ecology, forest ecology and management. Evan will be speaking about his Master's thesis work on fire history in the western United States.
Title: TBA3/8/06: Colin Plank, Graduate Student, University of Minnesota Department of Geology and Geophysics
Title: "Using Lake-Level Changes Associated With Historic Drought to Inform Paleolimnological Study"3/15/06: No seminar, week of spring break
3/22/06: Herb Wright, Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota Department of Geology
Herb Wright needs no introduction for most of us, well known for decades of research in a range of disciplines including ecology, limnology, paleoecology, and archaeology.
Title: "Kurdistan 50 years ago, and the 40 ka history of Lake Zeribar"3/29/06: Sabrina Curran and Ali Moyer, Graduate Students in the University of Minnesota Anthropology Department
Sabrina is interested in biological anthropology with a focus on paleoecology and Ali focuses on migrations of anatomically modern humans, approaching this issue as an aspect of human ecology, using evolutionary theory, osteology, and stable isotope analysis to answer archaeological questions.
Titles (respectively): "Ecomorphology and the Issue of Hominin Paleoecology" and "Use of Strontium Isotope Analysis to Characterize Subsistence Change and Ecology in Holocene Japan."4/5/05: Kaye Reed, Arizona State University, Department of Anthropology and Institute of Human Origins
Kaye Reed has a primary research interest in evolutionary paleoecology and the ecological context of evolution.
Title: "Differences in Pliocene Communities: The effects on early hominins and other primates"4/12/06: Guy Robinson, Fordham University, Department of Biology
Guy Robinson did his doctoral work at Fordham University using pollen, charcoal, and the fungus Sporomiella to investigate megafauna extinction in the eastern U.S.
Title: "Late Quaternary extinctions in the Northeast: patterns, processes and palynological clues"4/19/06: Mark Abbott, University of Pittsburgh, Deparment of Geology
Mark Abbott has research interests including sedimentology, paleolimnology, paleoclimatology, and climate variability over a wide range of timescales. His current focus in on the identification of lakes that contain high-resolution sediment records to investigate recent environmental change.
Title: TBA4/26/06: Kelly MacGregor, Macalester College, Department of Geology
Kelly's current research focuses on understanding the role of glaciers in shaping alpine landscapes. In addition to work on glaciers, she is interested in the effects of dams on sediment and water transport in river systems.
Title: TBA5/3/06: TBA
Fall 2005
9/21/2005: Ramon Egli (visiting scientist, Institute for Rock Magnetism, University of Minnesota-Minneapolis). "Magnetotactic bacteria and iron cycle in lake sediments: a case study"
9/28/2005: Joe Mason (Department of Geography, University of Wisconsion-Madison). "Dunes, dust, and drought: Aeolian records of climatic change in the Great Plains and northern China"
10/5/2005: Michael Talbot (Department of Earth Sciences, University of Bergen, Norway). "Deep drilling in Lakes Bosumtwi and Malawi, tropical Africa"
10/12/2005: Rebecca Clotts (PhD student, LRC/Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Minnesota). "Wetland Hydrology & Ostracode Shell d18O variability" along with some bonus coverage of "Peculiar mudcracks formed in cave sediments"
10/19/2005: no seminar (week of GSA)
10/26/2005: Ioan Lascu (PhD student, LRC/IRM/Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Minnesota). "Speleogenesis of Large Flank Margin Caves of the Bahamas"
11/2/2005: Harry Jol (Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire)
11/9/2005: Jacques Finlay (Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota-Minneapolis)
11/16/2005: Katsumi Matsumoto (new faculty member, Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Minnesota-Minneapolis). "Oceanic sequestration of anthropogenic carbon: A solution for the future?"
11/23/2005: no seminar (Thanksgiving)
11/30/2005: Rene Dommain (visiting graduate student, LRC, working with Paul Glaser). "Hydrogenetic mire types, pattern formation and the case of Alborn Fen (NE Minnesota)"
12/7/2005: Dan Stanley (Smithsonian). "Submergence of Ancient Greek Sites in the Mediterranean Sea - the how, why and when, and possible analogies with some modern low-lying coastal cities"
Updated March 16, 2008. Comments to Amy Myrbo
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