Tracking 15,000 Years of North America’s Climate
The plants, animals and people that populated North America’s changing landscape over the last 15,000 years left behind a detailed record of their environment. That record began to be revealed as ice from the last glacial period retreated.
Dr. Fred Longstaffe, Canada Research Chair in Stable Isotope Science, is examining plant and animal remains recovered from soils and lake sediments to track climate change in North America.
Teeth and bone are providing him with information about the water that animals drank. Drinking water helps reveal temperatures and other measurements of climate in the past and can even distinguish seasonal variations. Carbon and nitrogen in plant and animal tissues tell Longstaffe what grew and lived in an environment, who ate whom and why some animals went extinct.
By reconstructing this information, Longstaffe can trace patterns of warmer versus cooler and drier versus wetter conditions to the present.
Longstaffe is focusing his research on the Great Lakes region which is known for its past sensitivity to climate change. His examination of the region’s past and current data will help us anticipate the impacts of future change—including lake level fluctuations—in this vitally important inland waterway.