Symposium 4:
Quantitative paleoecology in the era of big data: Trends, challenges, and opportunities
Organizers: Suzette Flantua (University of Bergen), Oscar Wilson (University of Helsinki), Michelle Lawing (Texas A&M University), Leila Siciliano-Martina (Texas State U.), and Maria Alejandra Hurtado Materon (Texas A&M University)
Quantitative paleoecology has advanced substantially with the development of new statistical tools, computational capacities, and large datasets. This symposium focuses on how quantitative approaches reshape our ability to reconstruct past environments and biogeography, detect ecological thresholds, and understand ecological dynamics on various scales. Contributions will span methodological innovations, data handling, broad-scale syntheses, and interdisciplinary studies. The 2nd set of talks in this symposium will emphasize ecometrics, a subfield of quantitative paleoecology relating community trait distributions to the environment.
Speakers:
Introduction: Suzette Flantua (University of Bergen): Introduction to qualitative paleoecology
Ondřej Mottl (Charles University): Estimating vegetation change from fossil pollen to planetary boundaries: A Global, long-term synthesis using big data
Erin Dillon (Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute): Tracking coral reef ecosystem change over millennia in the Tropical Eastern Pacific using paleo archives
Gavin Simpson (Aarhus University): From Messy to Meaningful: Integrating Big Data in Palaeoecology
Introduction: Oscar Wilson (University of Helsinki): Introduction to ecometrics
Jenny McGuire (Georgia Tech): Ecometrics: frontiers for identifying community responses to global change
Abigail Parker (University of Helsinki): Quantitative paleoenvironmental reconstruction from mammalian ecometric traits: regression, ordination, and machine learning techniques
Regan Dunn (La Brea Tar Pits and Museum): Plant Traits, Canopy Structure, and Ecosystem Change Across Extinctions and Greenhouse Worlds
