Collaborative Research: Joint Studies with Soviet Scientists to Secure Parallel Histories of Climatic Change in Siberia and Alaska

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The effects of greenhouse warming are expected to be much greater in the arctic regions of both hemispheres than at low latitudes. In order to fully understand and predict the effects of such a warming at high latitudes, it is necessary to reconstruct the history of climate on the continents and over the oceans in the Arctic. The goal of this project is to reconstruct the glacial-interglacial history of climate in a region where, at present, there is a significant sparsity of paleoclimate information: the regions of Alaska and Siberia known as Beringia. Through a series of cooperative field programs, researchers from the US and USSR will collaborate on paleoecological, paleoclimatological and paleolimnological analyses which will determine both the history of climate change in this region and its effects on the local ecology. This project is important because it will help to identify and quantify the natural range and rates of change in climate in regions where significant changes are predicted for the future.