Discovering environmental variabilty over thousands of years by playing in the mud.
The Paleoenvironmental Change Research Group
Welcome to the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW) Paleoenvironmental Change Research Group webpage. Our research is primarily based on paleolimnological records of late Quaternary paleoenvironmental change in the southern United States and circum-Caribbean regions. We use a wide array of paleoenvironmental proxies — including stable isotopes, fossil pollen, charcoal, and macrofossils — to reconstruct changes in climate, vegetation, disturbance regimes, and prehistoric human impacts over millennia.
The lab is directed by Dr. Chad Lane, Professor in the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences and co-coordinator of the UNCW Center for Marine Science Forensic Light Isotope and Trace Environmental Spectrometry (FLITES) core facility.
What we analyzed in sediment
- Stable isotopes — carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen ratios in bulk sediment and compound-specific biomarkers
- Fossil pollen & charcoal — vegetation and fire history
- Macrofossils — plant and faunal remains preserved in the record
People
Faculty, research staff, graduate and undergraduate students, and lab alumni — past and present.
Meet the lab →Join the lab
We are always looking for outstanding graduate and undergraduate students interested in paleoenvironmental change in terrestrial and marine environments. If you'd like to work with us, get in touch.
Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences
University of North Carolina Wilmington
Phone: (910) 962-3466
Fax: (910) 962-3490
Email: lanec@uncw.edu