Shelley Crausbay

Research Assistant, CCR-CPEP
PhD student, Dept. of Botany
Advisor: Sara Hotchkiss

Department of Botany
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Birge Hall
430 Lincoln Drive
Madison, WI 53706

Phone: 608-262-2279
Fax: 608-262-7509
Email: crausbay@wisc.edu

Research Interests

Paleoecology and paleoclimatology in the tropical Pacific -- particularly the response of tropical forests to variation in precipitation over the Holocene. I am also interested in how paleoecology can prepare us for ecological consequences of the 20th - 21st century warming. My PhD work concentrates on paleorecords of precipitation, vegetation, and fire at the treeline ecotone in Hawaii, as well as modern vegetation and climate patterns.

Background

I received a Bachelor's degree in Landscape Architecture from Texas A&M University and a Masters at U Minnesota in Plant Biological Sciences, minoring in Quaternary Paleocecology. I worked on a very high-resolution lake sediment record to study the response of a lowland tropical monsoon forest (pollen analysis) to sub-annual variability in dry season intensity (trace element and isotopic geochemistry of carbonates) over the past millennium in East Java, Indonesia. Since then, I have spent the past five years living and working in Botswana, Seattle, and Maui. I look forward to living in lower latitudes someday soon.

Publications

Crausbay S., Russell J.M, and Schnurrenberger D.W. 2006. A ca. 800-year lithologic record of drought from sub-annually laminated lake sediment, East Java. Journal of Paleolimnology 35:641-659.