Wyatt Oswald
Emerson College, MA·Earth & Environmental Science
About 11,700 years ago, at the end of a cold spell called the Younger Dryas, northern New England warmed rapidly. Open tundra and scattered spruce gave way to closed forest.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Ecology & Evolution
Social Science
- Topics
paleoclimate
Younger Dryas
Pleistocene-Holocene transition
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Reconstruct past temperatures in northern New England across the end of the Younger Dryas using chironomid insect fossils preserved in lake sediments.
- Reconstruct the shift from tundra and spruce parkland to closed forest using pollen analysis of lake sediment cores.
- Build high-resolution chronologies for Fluted-Point Period and Late Paleoindian Period stone tool industries to date changes in human technology and settlement.
- Compare the timing of climate, vegetation and human changes to test whether forest spread led to reduced mobility and regional depopulation.
More about the research
This landscape once looked much like parts of today's Arctic, so its past offers a window into how Arctic areas near the treeline may change as the climate warms. People living there also changed how they lived, but the details are poorly understood. This collaborative project asks how closely human adaptation followed these environmental shifts.
Why it matters
The work offers a long-term view of how people respond to abrupt warming. It may also show how modern Arctic landscapes at and above the treeline may change as climate warms. These insights are relevant to communities in northern regions facing rapid environmental change. Results reach local and Indigenous communities and the public through films and outreach.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Bronwen Konecky
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
Reconstruct 10,000 years of Holocene rainfall and vegetation in Central America and northern South America by measuring hydrogen isotopes of leaf waxes in six dated lake cores from Guatemala and Venezuela.
Alexandra Greenwald
University of Utah, UT·Social Science
Reconstruct the mobility and residential histories of 41 ancestors from a 12,000-9,000-year-old Bay Area mortuary site using strontium isotope analysis of tooth enamel, which records the geology of where a person lived as the enamel formed.
Brian Buma
University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus, CO·Ecology & Evolution
Reconstruct the history of short-interval fires in boreal forests over thousands of years by analyzing charcoal records in new and existing lake sediment cores.
The school
Emerson College: 1 labs on PI Pages.
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