Donald T. Rodbell, professor of geology, has received a four-year grant of $327,000 from the National Science Foundation for a project with colleague Mark Abbott of the University of Pittsburgh that will compare archeological records of cultural change with scientific evidence of climate change in the Central Andes.
The project, titled “Late Holocene Climate of the Central Andes Identified from Sedimentary, Stable Isotopic, Geochemical and Biological Proxies,” the project is expected to involve a number of Union students who will join Rodbell and colleagues for field work in the Andes Mountains and research in the lab.
The grant is the latest in a series of NSF grants for Rodbell's ongoing research on the climate record in the Southern Hemisphere.
Under the grant, Rodbell and colleagues will be looking for evidence of large scale, severe droughts on the altiplano of southern Peru and Bolivia. The altiplano, one of the world's largest high elevation plateaus, is quite dry and coupled with its high elevation (13,000 to 14,000 feet) makes the region barely habitable today. People there are living on the edge, and subsistence farming depends on rain during the Southern Hemisphere summer (December to March).
Archeologists have recorded evidence of widespread societal collapses on the altiplano over the last several millennia. Simultaneously, geologists have documented fragmented evidence for episodic severe droughts over the same interval.
The project is focused on improving our knowledge of the chronology and spatial variability of severe droughts over the last 5,000 years on the altiplano to enable a better comparison between the archeological record of cultural change and past climates. The research should provide an example of how future widespread climate change may affect civilizations that are living on the margins of survivability.
This summer, the team will do research in the Huayhuash Range, the site of Siula Grandé, the 21,000-foot peak made famous in Touching the Void, the book and film by Joe Simpson about an adventure in which a climber is forced to cut a rope holding a fellow climber. The team will hire more than two dozen horses to carry gear and core samples over the remote and rugged terrain.