Climate Change Meeting Brings Researchers To The University Of Arkansas

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - Floods, droughts and El Nino will be among the topics discussed next week at a national meeting that will attract top scientists from various disciplines to the University of Arkansas campus.

The American Quarternary Association and the university’s environmental dynamics program will host the 16^th biennial meeting May 22-24 at the Center for Continuing Education at the University of Arkansas. This year’s program focuses on landscape and biotic responses to climate variability in the past, present and future.

The meeting will attract about 250 researchers from geology, geography, anthropology, paleoclimatology, biology, oceanography and paleoecology whose work focuses on the last 1.6 million years of earth’s history.

"Because we have many different research specialties, we try to cover topics that cross disciplines in their subject areas," said Margaret Guccione, associate professor of geosciences and coordinator for the event.

Invited speakers include Judith Lean of the Naval Research Laboratory, a world expert on solar variability; Jonathan Overpeck, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Arizona; Mike Mann of the University of Virginia, one of the authors of the most recent IPCC report on global warming; and David Stahle of the University of Arkansas, a leader in the field of dendrochronology who studies the history of climate through tree rings.

The invited speakers will present findings on climate variability, El Nino effects on prehistoric human groups in South America, prehistoric responses of vegetation to drought, human responses to changes in precipitation, simulated El Nino effects and vegetation response to elevated carbon dioxide levels and societal impacts of modern drought.

In addition to the program there will be poster sessions on May 22 and 23 in rooms 409 and 410 of the Continuing Education Building.

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