Research in the Past Environments cluster investigates the nature, magnitude and timing of past climate and environmental change, and the interactions between climate, environments and past human populations. We study palaeoenvironments using evidence from ‘natural archives’ – Earth materials that preserve information on past temperatures, hydrology and ecosystems.
One specialisation of the cluster is the use of geochemical records from calcium carbonate mineral deposits and fossils – such as shells, speleothems, marls, corals and otoliths – to understand environmental processes in marine, terrestrial and freshwater environments and at archaeological sites. We often combine this data with biogeographical, sedimentary, stratigraphical and geochronological information to reconstruct environmental histories over time periods ranging from the most recent centuries to the last few million years.
Our research also involves microsampling, pollen preparation, microscopy, and stable isotope analysis. We conduct research in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, the Pacific, Asia, and South America.
Coordinators
Amy Prendergast and Ash Hood
Academic staff
A/Prof Jan-Hendrik May
Prof Rachel Popelka-Filcoff
Prof Russell Drysdale
Russell focuses on the nature, timing and causes of ice-age terminations and millennial-scale climate change during the Quaternary Period, in conjunction with geochronologists, palaeoceanographers, ice-core scientists and palaeoclimate modellers. His main research area is ice-age cycles, which combines cave, ocean and insolation data to interrogate the drivers of ice-age terminations. His Australian research focuses mainly on past hydrological changes in southern Australia and the monsoon tropics, particularly what drives such changes and how they are influenced by global climate perturbations.
rnd@unimelb.edu.au +61383449318
Dr Kale Sniderman
Kale is a biogeographer, palynologist, and palaeoclimatologist. He is interested in extraction of fossil pollen from speleothems, as a way of understanding how vegetation evolved through time, particularly in dry regions where conventional wetland sediment archives are unavailable.
kale.sniderman@unimelb.edu.au +61390359873