Geography graduate student Jacquelyn Gill examining lake sediment cores.
Geography graduate student Jacquelyn Gill and Assistant Professor John W. (Jack) Williams led a study published in Science last November that attracted global news coverage.
The paper, Pleistocene Megafaunal Collapse, Novel Plant Communities and Enhanced Fire Regimes In North America, used fossil pollen, charcoal, and spores from the dung fungus Sporormiella to show that the extinction of ice-age mammals was followed by widespread ecological change.
Geography undergraduate Katherine Lininger, Guy Robinson at Fordham University, and Stephen Jackson at the University of Wyoming were co-authors.
This work was funded by the National Science Foundation, WARF and the UW Center for Climatic Research.
A new study by UW researchers shows the disappearance of North America’s large herbivores triggered a reshaping of the landscape. Illustration: Barry Carlsen.