EES faculty receives $414,264 grant for climate change and biodiversity research
Two faculty members in Indiana State University’s Department of Earth and Environmental Systems are part of a study that has been awarded a $2.5 million grant by the National Science Foundation’s Biodiversity on a Changing Planet program, an international, transdisciplinary effort that addresses major challenges related to climate change.
Dr. Jeffery Stone leads this five-year research project
Dr. Jeffery Stone, Professor of Environmental Geosciences, and Dr. Jennifer Latimer, Professor of Geology, join a team of scholars in a study seeking to understand how aquatic biodiversity in Africa’s Great Rift Valley is affected by climate change. The study is led by Michael McGlue, Associate Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Kentucky.
The project, titled “The impact of climate change on functional biodiversity across spatiotemporal scales at Lake Tanganyika, Africa,” will assess different scenarios of climate change and its effects on the lake’s ecosystems. Using high-resolution geological records, fossils, and genetic tools, the team will set up a series of experiments to track variability in the lake’s biodiversity across thousands of years. The results will show how the food web responds to changes in temperature and precipitation, with potential for predicting changes in biodiversity amidst severe climatic uncertainty in large tropical lakes.
The project, titled “The impact of climate change on functional biodiversity across spatiotemporal scales at Lake Tanganyika, Africa,” will assess different scenarios of climate change and its effects on the lake’s ecosystems. Using high-resolution geological records, fossils, and genetic tools, the team will set up a series of experiments to track variability in the lake’s biodiversity across thousands of years. The results will show how the food web responds to changes in temperature and precipitation, with potential for predicting changes in biodiversity amidst severe climatic uncertainty in large tropical lakes.
With this information in hand, fisheries and ecosystem managers will be better equipped to make decisions that safeguard food resources.
Stone will study fossil diatom (algae) assemblages found in core samples from the lake bed. Changes in diatom assemblages can be used to reconstruct responses to past lake environment conditions, such as the lake’s thermal structure and nutrient fluxes. Moreover, quantifying diatom paleo-production will allow the research team to ascertain how changes at the base of the food web relate to changes in fish fossil abundance. Latimer will lead a team studying the nutrient geochemistry of Lake Tanganyika, in particular the role of phosphorous in the lake’s ecosystem during various climate scenarios from the past.
“While the science we proposed is exciting,” Latimer said, “the aspects of this project I am most looking forward to include providing new research experiences for ISU students, engaging with local scientists from the surrounding countries of Tanzania, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, working to increase geoscience capacity in this part of Africa through workshops, and placing a paleo-perspective on water and fisheries resources in the area that may help to improve resource management in the future.”
Other collaborators include scientists from the University of Toledo, University of Wyoming, University of Arizona, University of Connecticut, and Brown University.
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