Climate Change
Aug 06, 2019
Jack Williams, Professor UW-Madison Geography
Climate Change

At UW-Madison, Williams uses fossil records from the last ice age to study how species and ecosystems adapt to a rapidly changing world. “We live in a changing world – change is inevitable — and people are unsettled by that,” he says. “Populations are growing worldwide. Climates are changing worldwide. Economies are changing worldwide. Our goal is to give people the best information about how the world is changing, and why, and then leave it to our democracies to figure out how best to move forward.”

Research in his lab spans the gamut, from field coring of lake sediments, to analyses of these sediments in the lab (mainly fossil pollen, charcoal, and related signals of past ecological and climatic changes) to continental- to global-scale syntheses of ecological data and climate models.

Much of the research, including that on kettle lakes in Wisconsin, relies on the geological record and the last Ice Age as a model system to see how species have responded to past climate change.

For more information about Jack Williams visit:  https://research.wisc.edu/jack-williams/

Provided by Kelly Whalen