Speaker: Sara Hotchkiss, Professor of Botany, University of Wisconsin-Madison
The history of ecosystems is recorded in sediment basins, which tend to collect whatever lands there. The spatial provenance of paleoecological records varies with the sedimentary environment and the properties of the remains — larger lakes accumulate airborne particles from larger areas, and heavier items have more local provenance.
Many research questions depend on the spatial resolution of information about history, but most paleoecological data are spatially vague. We will focus on the northwestern Wisconsin sand plain, where records of vegetation and fire history at multiple sites describe local changes across the landscape over thousands of years.
Much of this work has been designed to answer ecological questions; ecologists recognize humans as part of ecosystems but face large gaps in relevant knowledge. How might spatially resolved paleoecological records help us to understand how humans shaped and inhabited Wisconsin’s northwest sands ecological landscape?