New developments in tracking seabird and Pacific salmon population histories from lake sediment records, and their relationship to past climate.

Lake sediments are useful to track long-term environmental changes. Recent developments in analytical approaches allow us to ask new questions about recent climate change,  human perturbations, and even fluctuations in large-scale animal migrations based on lake sediment core analysis. We are working to develop geochemical techniques (stable isotopes, sterols, stanols, eDNA) and working with colleagues who specialize in biological tracers (especially microfossil community assemblages of diatoms and chironomids) and paleoclimate indictors to help us track migratory seabird and Pacific salmon populations from sediment records. We are also finding evidence that large animal population migrations may have responded to climatic anomalies and other perturbations related to human activities. This seminar will explore new developments in lake sediment archival analysis of cores adjacent to large seabird colonies and major Pacific salmon migration routes. I will introduce some of the methods we have used to track past seabird and Pacific salmon population dynamics from sediment records and show how climatic anomalies affected these signals.