Laboratories

Earth System Modeling Lab

(Behling, Bryson, DeWeaver, Gallimore, Jacob, Kutzbach, Liu, McKinley, Notaro, Vavrus, Vimont)

The earth-system modeling group uses a variety of models of the earth's atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial and marine biospheres to simulate earth-system behavior.

CCSM: The Community Climate System Model (CCSM) of the National Center for Climatic Research (NCAR) incorporates processes of the atmosphere-ocean system, and provides a basic modeling framework for studies of global climate. We are currently coupling this model to a vegetation model (LPJ). NCAR makes CCSM available to us for use in research applications and also provides computer time. Our primary contact at NCAR is Dr. Bette Otto-Bliesner.

FOAM: The Fast Ocean Atmosphere Model (FOAM), developed in part at UW-Madison by Professor John Anderson in cooperation with the Department of Energy, simulates atmosphere-ocean systems in a computer-efficent manner using highly parallelized code. We are currently coupling FOAM to a vegetation model (LPJ). Our primary contact for using this model is Dr. Robert Jacob from the University of Chicago.

GENESIS: This model simulates atmospheric processes and is coupled to a mixed-layer ocean. A version of this model has been coupled to an interactive vegetation model IBIS. The GENESIS model is supported at Pennsylvania State University, where our primary contact is Dr. David Pollard.

LPJ: This model of vegetation processes is being developed at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, by Professor I. C. Prentice.

MPCM: The Macro-Physical Climate Model (MPCM), aka Archaeoclimatology, simulates coupled climate system processes through coupled energy and hydrologic budget equations linked to statistical-dynamical algorithms. The goal of the MPCM is to provide accurate and region-specific climate simulations for use in archeaoclimatological research. The model is being developed and applied by Professor Reid A. Bryson here at UW-Madison.

EBM: A simple Energy Budget Model (EBM) is available on this web site for on-line calculations of energy budget climates. Dr. Steve Vavrus of CCR contributed this model.

Paleoecology Lab

(Hotchkiss, Winkler, Sanford, Kaplan, Jeraj, Williams)

Resources

Paleoecological work is a vital component of environmental research. It provides a long-term perspective on the development of and ranges and rates of change of ecosystems. It measures the resiliency or vulnerability of biota to natural and human-induced perturbations and provides baseline data necessary for documentation of anthropogenic impacts.

In the Paleoecology Laboratory in the Nelson Institute, Center for Climatic Research (CCR), Dr. Sara Hotchkiss (Assistant Professor), Dr. Marjorie Winkler (Senior Scientist) and Dr. Patricia Sanford (Associate Scientist) study past environments from the fossil record preserved in lake and bog sediments. They analyze pollen, charcoal, diatoms and other algae, cladocera and other zooplankton, and sediment chemistry, to determine changes in vegetation, fire history, limnology (trophic and pH history of freshwaters and estuaries), geomorphology, land use, and climate for sites throughout the world.

Students and researchers come to the lab seeking information to test their vegetation, climate and landscape models, to determine the past history of their study sites, to provide background for archaeological results, and to evaluate impacts from recent environmental and climatic changes by comparison with prehistoric evidence. A working relationship exists with several university facilities and departments, such as Botany, the State Herbarium, Geology, the Center for Limnology, Anthropology, Geography, the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, Chemistry, Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. The paleoecology lab offers unique interdisciplinary research support to students from those and other divisions of the university.

Current projects include:

  • Correlation of varve thickness, tree-ring width, and climatic variables at Emrick Lake (Samantha Kaplan)
  • Reconstructing Holocene erosion history and vegetation change with high temporal resolution at Emrick Lake (Kevin Spigel)
  • Studying episodic drought events In the Great Lakes region using testate amoeba remains (Bob Booth)
  • Developing a climate-vegetation-fire history at landscape and local scales for the Sand Plains region of northwestern Wisconsin (David Alexander, Michael Twieten, Bob Booth, Beth Lynch [Luther College], Randy Calcote [University of Minnesota], and Sara Hotchkiss)
  • Studying spruce-budworm/fire interactions in the Sand Plains region of northwestern Wisconsin (Michael Twieten)
  • Reconstructing human ecosystem dynamics in Hawaii for the last 1200 years (Marjeta Jeraj, Sara Hotchkiss, James Coil, Lisa Holm, and Patrick Kirch [University of California, Berkeley], Peter Vitousek, Shripad Tuljapurkara and Charlotte Lee [Stanford University], Oliver Chadwick and Tony Hartshorn [University of California, Santa Barbara], Michael Graves [University of Hawaii], and Thegn Ladegoged [University of Aukland])
  • Studying anthropogenic impacts on lakes in southeastern Wisconsin using ostracodes (Paula Allen)
  • Studying beaver-vegetation impacts over the last few centuries in Acadia National Park, Maine (Amanda Little)
  • Investigating Holocene environmental change in the Sac River region of southwest Missouri as revealed by pollen analysis (Patrick Moss)
    using pollen analysis to explore the Eocene environments of the Okanagan Highlands of British Columbia and Washington state (Patrick Moss)
  • Investigating a peat section revealed at the Riverland Conservancy at the Merrimac Preserve in Sauk County, Wisconsin (Patricia Sanford, Marjorie Winkler, Sara Hotchkiss, and Amanda Little)
  • Reconstructing changes in macrophyte community composition and the extent of the littoral zone in northern Wisconsin lakes over the last few centuries using pollen, macrofossils, and cladoceran remains (Mara Finkelstein)
  • Determining responses of lakes to long-term drought (Sara Hotchkiss, Randy Calcote [Limnological Research Center, University of Minnesota], Patricia Sanford, and Marjorie Winkler)
  • Developing a paleoecological record of lake response to eutrophication and de-eutrophication for Lake Washington, Seattle, Washington (Peter Leavitt [University of Regina, Saskatchewan] and Patricia Sanford)
  • Surveying cladocera from the Dominican Republic (Patricia Sanford and Sally Horn [University of Tennessee])
  • Evaluating eutrophication of kettle lakes in the Cape Cod National Seashore, including a monograph of paleodata from the Cape Cod National Seashore freshwater ponds (Marjorie Winkler and Patricia Sanford)

Link: Quaternary Paleocology Lab

Archaeoclimatology Lab

(R. A. Bryson, R.U. Bryson, A.H. Ruter, J. Arzt, M. Kuchta, S. Kaplan, K. McEnaney, E. Hopkins, R. A. Varney, E. Ito, E. Hokanson, L.S. Cummings, and A. Stenger)

The Archaeoclimatology Lab develops and applies a macrophysical climate model (MCM) to research topics linking climates and cultures. The Lab has developed this particular model, which runs on a personal computer, to be site-specic and of high temporal resolution, and data bases of climate forcing, including extensive records of global volcanic eruptions that influence climate, and of cultural data, and has extensive links with archeological researchers world-wide. The past climates have been calculated at about 2000 places worldwide. The lab has also given workshops on how to use the model in various areas of the world, such as in Sweden, Germany and Canada, and a number of places in the United States.

The Archaeoclimatology Lab is involved in a long-term project with the Arizona State University at Tempe, described as "Land-use Dynamics of the Mediterranean Basin", or "Landuse and Landscape Socioecology in the Mediterranean Basin A Natural Laboratory for the Study of the Long-Term Interaction of Human and Natural Systems. All of modern society depends ultimately on the products of agriculture and animal herding. This agropastoral economy first appeared in the Mediterranean basin in the early Holocene, nearly 10,000 years ago, and represented a dramatic reorganization of human ecology. It involved increasingly intensive efforts by farming peoples to control environmental factors favorable to the life cycle of domestic plants and animals, with a consequent cascade of complexly interlinked effects on regional landscapes and human society.”

The project will attempt to model the interaction of people, plants, animals, climate, and the land for the entire Holocene.

This project involves scholars from many disciplines: archaeology, anthropology, climatology, geography, ecology, geology, soils, palynology, statistics, and includes earth system modelers. We at Wisconsin in the Archaeoclimatology Lab will provide the climatic expertise for the team of a couple dozen scholars, and will model the past climate in the two main locations: Eastern Spain and Jordan. See: http://www.asu.edu/clas/shesc/projects/medland/