October 25, 2023
4-5 pm UTC
Join us on Wednesday, October 25, at 4 pm UTC for the Funk Lecture given by Crystal McMichael.
Talk Title: “Ecological legacies and forests resilience in Amazonia”
Crystal McMichael is a paleoecologist, tropical ecologist, and biogeographer working in the Department of Ecosystem and Landscape Dynamics at the University of Amsterdam. She is an Associate Editor at Journal of Ecology and Plants, People, Planet, and was the previous Vice-President of Conferences for the International Biogeography Society.
Crystal integrates paleoecological data with archaeological data, botanical inventory data, and remote-sensing data to assess how past disturbances (both climatic and anthropogenic) affect modern forest systems. She has also co-led the development of approaches of using FTIR spectroscopy to infer the burn temperature of past fire events in paleoecological records. She is a specialist in reconstructing fire histories, and in phytolith analysis, which are silica microfossils that preserve in soils and sediments and can be used to reconstruct past vegetation and vegetation change.
