Details of Award
NERC Reference : NE/N018990/1
Quaternary Palaeoecology Advanced Training Short Course
Training Grant Award
- Lead Supervisor:
- Dr T C B Hill, The Natural History Museum, Earth Sciences
- Grant held at:
- The Natural History Museum, Earth Sciences
- Science Area:
- Freshwater
- Marine
- Terrestrial
- Overall Classification:
- Freshwater
- ENRIs:
- Biodiversity
- Environmental Risks and Hazards
- Global Change
- Science Topics:
- Landscape & Environ. Archaeol.
- Climate & Climate Change
- Palaeoenvironments
- Systematics & Taxonomy
- Past environments
- Earth Surface Processes
- Abstract:
- The Quaternary Palaeoecology short course is aimed at postgraduate students and early career researchers. This course will provide students with the opportunity to develop a grounding in the key biological indicators used to elucidate past environmental change, with a focus on freshwater terrestrial environments. The course content will include the introduction of beetles, chironomids, diatoms, pollen, and vertebrates as indicators of past environments. Palaeoenvironmental research is of critical importance due to the relative lack of reliable documented climate records predating the 20th century. This has resulted in the use of biological climate 'proxies', often preserved within sedimentary archives, to provide qualitative and quantitative reconstructions of the past, in terms of climate and environmental conditions. As the biological proxies within Quaternary strata are composed of a combination of extinct and extant species, the Natural History Museum is ideally suited to the delivery of this course due to the world-class collections housed within the museum that are directly relevant to the course contents, in addition to the in-house taxonomic expertise available. Each day of the shot course will be dedicated to a different taxonomic group, with morning lectures reviewing taxonomy of the group under consideration, before focus turns to the environmental gradients associated with palaeoecological reconstructions. The afternoon sessions are then dedicated to the provision of bespoke laboratory microscopy and deskbased activities. During these practical sessions, there will be an initial focus on developing the student's scholarship in taxonomy. As part of this exercise, students will be introduced to relevant NHM reference collections and use these valuable resources when learning the taxonomic skills required to differentiate between species. This will then be followed by sessions in applied palaeoecology, where students will gain experience in the application of that taxonomic group to palaeoenvironmental reconstructions. The proposed short course is designed to specialise in the application of micro- and macrofossils to understand the past, monitor the present and predict the future. The course will therefore not only address NERCs Training Priorities 6 and 8, but it will also complement a number of NERCs currently active research programmes including Arctic Research programme, Biodiversity & Ecosystem Service Sustainability (BESS), Coastal Sediment Systems, RAPID Climate Change, UK IODP and Valuing Nature. A national need for such a course is highlighted by the fact that reconstructing past environments is a key initiative within current attempts to i) contextualise contemporary environmental change, ii) model the Earth's climate and iii) predict future climate and associated environmental change. These themes are a concise reflection of the typical research themes/priorities highlighted by NERCs existing DTPs, where themes associated with understanding environmental change and reconstructing past environments were encountered in the majority of the DTP descriptors. Over 20% of the PhD project proposals currently on offer within the London DTP alone involve palaeoenvironmental reconstructions and/or the application of biological proxies to understanding biodiversity and systems change. Considering this is only referring to one of the 15 NERC funded partnerships, this short course will continue to be in high demand.
- NERC Reference:
- NE/N018990/1
- Grant Stage:
- Completed
- Scheme:
- Doctoral Training
- Grant Status:
- Closed
- Programme:
- Advanced Training
This training grant award has a total value of £18,382
FDAB - Financial Details (Award breakdown by headings)
| Total - Other Costs |
|---|
| £18,382 |
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