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  • Rights: University of Waikato
    Published 11 May 2011 Referencing Hub media
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    Dr Marcus Vandergoes, a paleoecologist1 at GNS Science, explains how cores from Ōkārito Pākihi and other Westland peat bogs provide evidence2 for climate3 and environmental change over the last 135,000 years. Precise dating is important so that the speed of past climate changes can be estimated.

    Transcript

    DR MARCUS VANDERGOES
    The peat bog areas in Franz Josef and Fox Glacier and the cores we recover from them, they’re incredibly important for studying climate change4. We have a hidden record of some of those sites going back 135,000 years – they actually span a number of ice ages5 and a number of warm periods in between – and that’s why the Ōkārito peat bog is really important in New Zealand for containing that type of sediment6 sequence.

    Studying pollen7 and insects and other plant fossils and microfossils helps us study environmental change and reconstruct environmental change. So if we get a cold climate, we might expect a certain type of beetle or pollen type that is representative of a cold climate, say alpine8 grassland. When we get a warm climate, we get tall trees, forests like say rimu forests you currently get on the West Coast of the South Island.

    It’s important to understand what time these environmental changes occurred and also how fast they occurred, like particularly if we’re looking at say climate change, to know that the climate changed in a matter9 of 100 years or 3,000 years is a very important thing to understand, particularly when we’re trying to understand how fast climate may change in the future. Some of these events do take a long time to change and some of them are quite rapid, and by looking at this history in these sediments10, the lakes and the peat bogs, by using dating techniques, we can understand how quickly these changes occurred.

    What we’re trying to achieve is understanding how New Zealand responded to global climate change. Certain areas of the world responded in a different way, at different times, and looking at New Zealand’s climate history, we can see if it changed at the same time as say the Northern Hemisphere, North America or Australia and other parts of the world as well. And if they occurred all at the same time, we know that it’s responding to a global climate change, whereas if it occurred slightly differently – sooner, later – it could be something more local, something to do say with the Southern Ocean-driven climate change. So we can find a lot of this information out with using precision11 dating techniques.

    Understanding the environmental changes in the past gives us very good insights into the current12 climate discussions that people around the world are having. We can find a lot of this information out of the past and then can use that to inform us for understanding global climate change in the future.

    Acknowledgements:
    South Island Map © 2011 Google – Map data13
    © 2011 Google
    Whereis ®
    Sensis Pty Ltd.
    Steve Attwood

    1. paleoecologist: Someone who studies fossils of plants and animals in order to reconstruct past ecosystems.
    2. evidence: Data, or information, used to prove or disprove something.
    3. climate: The weather conditions of an area averaged over a series of years, usually 30 or more.
    4. climate change: The large-scale, long-term increase in the Earth’s average temperatures, with associated changes in weather patterns. There is significant scientific evidence that warming is due to increased quantities of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, with most of the rise due to human activity.
    5. ice age: Ice ages occur when the Earth’s climate cools and large areas of land and sea become covered by vast ice sheets. The Earth has experienced many ice ages in its lifetime.
    6. sediments: Material that settles to the bottom of a liquid. In geology, it describes the solid fragments of inorganic or organic material that come from the weathering of rock and are carried and deposited by wind, water or ice.
    7. pollen: Dust-like grains that contain male sex cells (gametes) of flowering plants (angiosperms) and cone plants (gymnosperms). Pollen is made on the anthers of flowering plants.
    8. alpine habitats: High in the mountains, beyond where trees grow.
    9. matter: The basic structural component of all things that have mass and volume.
    10. sediments: Material that settles to the bottom of a liquid. In geology, it describes the solid fragments of inorganic or organic material that come from the weathering of rock and are carried and deposited by wind, water or ice.
    11. precision: The closeness that repeated measurements show under unchanged experimental conditions.
    12. current: The flow of electric charge through a conductor.
    13. data: The unprocessed information we analyse to gain knowledge.
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      paleoecologist

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    2. Someone who studies fossils of plants and animals in order to reconstruct past ecosystems.

      climate change

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    4. The large-scale, long-term increase in the Earth’s average temperatures, with associated changes in weather patterns. There is significant scientific evidence that warming is due to increased quantities of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, with most of the rise due to human activity.

      pollen

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    6. Dust-like grains that contain male sex cells (gametes) of flowering plants (angiosperms) and cone plants (gymnosperms). Pollen is made on the anthers of flowering plants.

      precision

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    8. The closeness that repeated measurements show under unchanged experimental conditions.

      evidence

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    10. Data, or information, used to prove or disprove something.

      ice age

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    12. Ice ages occur when the Earth’s climate cools and large areas of land and sea become covered by vast ice sheets. The Earth has experienced many ice ages in its lifetime.

      alpine habitats

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    14. High in the mountains, beyond where trees grow.

      current

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    16. The flow of electric charge through a conductor.

      climate

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    18. The weather conditions of an area averaged over a series of years, usually 30 or more.

      sediments

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    20. Material that settles to the bottom of a liquid. In geology, it describes the solid fragments of inorganic or organic material that come from the weathering of rock and are carried and deposited by wind, water or ice.

      matter

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    22. The basic structural component of all things that have mass and volume.

      data

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    24. The unprocessed information we analyse to gain knowledge.