Environmental Change Laboratory

The Environmental Change Laboratory in the Department of Geosciences at FAU  studies human-environment interaction and environmental change across the Holocene. The lab uses fieldwork and laboratory methods to reconstruct environmental and climate histories that serve to inform the present. The lab also has projects that model future and past environments.

Fieldwork is primarily focused in the Neotropics with projects  investigating pre- and post-maize agricultural environments, fire histories, the timing and pathways of key agricultural domesticates, societal response to multi-decadal drought events, the development of paleoclimate records, reconstructions of past landscapes, the impact and modeling of paleo flooding, and environmental archaeology. Research project locations include Costa Rica, Ecuador, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and Florida.

The lab's research utilizes a multi-proxy approach to reconstructing environmental change from the sediment record. Methods and analyses include pollen analysis, microscopic and macroscopic charcoal analysis, stable isotope geochemistry of bulk sediment, radiocarbon dating pretreatment, organic (and inorganic) matter analysis, elemental analysis (XRF), sediment and soil core stratigraphic analysis, age-depth modeling, and GIS modeling. The lab is equipped to collect and analyze sediment cores from lake and wetland locations.

The Environmental Change Lab is a USDA APHIS inspected facility authorized to receive foreign and domestic soil and sediment to analyze from around the world.

For more information, contact Dr. Erik Johanson.

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