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SUMMARY:Under the Physical Geography Parasol: Climate and History - Profes
 sor Christine Lane and Professor Ulf Büntgen\, Department of Geography\, 
 University of Cambridge
DTSTART:20171019T143000Z
DTEND:20171019T170000Z
UID:TALK81831@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:45781
DESCRIPTION:Professor Christine Lane: Timing is everything. Using tephra t
 o explore past climate and environmental change.\n\nUnderstanding the spat
 ial and temporal variability of climate forcing as well as human and palae
 oenvironmental responses to change\, relies upon comparison of data from w
 idespread terrestrial\, glacial and marine archives. Building accurate\, p
 recise and independent chronologies for palaeoclimate\, palaeoenvironmenta
 l and archaeological records is essential\; however this remains a major c
 hallenge in many environments and often prevents the valid comparison of d
 etailed palaeo-proxy records. In the Cambridge Tephra Lab we are using far
 -travelled volcanic ash tie-lines to tackle these issues and to address in
 terdisciplinary research questions. This talk will focus on on-going inves
 tigations into the presence of visible and non-visible (crypto-) tephra la
 yers within lacustrine palaeoenvironmental records of the last ~150 ka BP 
 from across East Africa. With this approach we are revealing the potential
  to (i) precisely correlate\, and therefore robustly compare\, palaeoclima
 te archives from across and beyond tropical Africa within a regional tephr
 ostratigraphic framework\; (ii) provide chronologies for individual lake s
 ediment palaeoclimate records\, in particular beyond the limits of radioca
 rbon dating\; (iii) increase our knowledge of the history of Late Quaterna
 ry explosive volcanism in East Africa\; and (iv) explore the environmental
  impacts of major volcanic eruptions\, which are believed to have had glob
 al climate effects.\n\n\nProfessor Ulf Büntgen: A tree-ring perspective o
 n climate and history.\n\nIn this talk\, I will focus on novel tree ring-b
 ased\, proxy evidence of the European Alps and the Russian Altai-Sayan Mou
 ntains in Inner Eurasia. While stressing data-inherent and methodological-
 induced limitations of the existing high-resolution\, summer temperature r
 econstructions\, I will emphasize their spatiotemporal coherency and abili
 ty to link past climate variability with human history. Large-scale peopol
 itical and socio-cultural transformations during the Late Antique Little I
 ce Age between 536 and ~660 CE (LALIA)\, the sudden withdrawal of the Mong
 ols from the Hungarian Plain in 1242 CE\, and the unprecedented rate and m
 agnitude of dispersal and virulence of the Black Death from 1347 CE onward
 s\, will be used as key examples of how climatic and environmental changes
  have\, directly and/or indirectly\, affected historical societies. Finall
 y\, I will prioritize future\, interdisciplinary research avenues towards 
 a better understanding of natural climate variations and its forcing agent
 s\, as well as the associated ecosystem responses and societal consequence
 s throughout much of the late Holocene.  \n
LOCATION:Small Lecture Theatre\, Department of Geography\, Downing Site
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