LOI Paleodata

Climate is rapidly changing. Increased temperatures, frequent droughts, fires and floods, and rising sea levels are likely to have deep impacts on landscapes, species distributions, economical activities and human health. In order to better understand current global changes and to project future scenarios, knowledge of past climate-ecosystem dynamics is imperative. Although the past does not provide a prescriptive guide to the future, it allows the inference of environmental variability and the underlying processes that form the basis for an evaluation of present day trends, future probabilities and likely consequences on human activities and welfare. The vital role of paleo-science in global change discussions is widely acknowledged. As a result, environmental policy and decision makers worldwide are increasingly using paleo environmental data (derived from marine and lake sediments, ice cores, tree rings, boreholes, corals, etc.) to to help guide environmental management policies.