Macquarie University

ENVE878: Advanced Soils

This unit investigates environmental records to understand how landscapes respond to climate change. This unit considers historical climate changes and environmental response and how the pre-historic record from sediment, tree rings, ice cores and landforms can be used to reconstruct past environments to gain an understanding of how the earth system evolves. These records are then related to evidence of environmental change seen in the local Australian landscape, and investigated during field excursions, including a week long field trip during the mid-semester break. We provide case studies of how these reconstructions have influenced our current understanding of how landscapes evolve. Examples include: how ancient DNA analysis of frozen sediments provides evidence of human interaction with woolly mammoths in the Arctic; reconstructing how environmental change in Indonesia shaped the evolution of early humans; and how climatic change during the past hundred thousand years affected sediment transport and drainage systems in the Murray Darling basin. We also discuss how evidence of change in the local region can inform land management practices with the onset of climate change.