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Ancient pollen samples and a new statistical approach may shed light on the global rate of change of vegetation and eventually on how much climate change and humans  have played a part in altering landscapes, according to an international team of researchers.

"We know that climate and people interact with natural ecosystems and change them," said Sarah Ivory, assistant professor of geosciences and associate in the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, Penn State. "Typically, we go to some particular location and study this by teasing apart these influences. In particular, we know that the impact people have goes back much earlier than what is typically accepted as the case. However, we haven't been able to observe the patterns created by these processes globally or long-term."

Susan L. Brantley, distinguished professor of geosciences and director of the Earth Environmental Systems Institute at Penn State, has been elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The 2021 class of members contains 252 new members who join the more than 13,500 members who have been elected since the Academy was founded in 1780 by the country's founders.

What does research about the early Earth, the tectonics of the Alps and the collapse of ancient mountains have in common? Understanding of all these important Earth processes can benefit from an advanced mineral dating technique conducted in a new Penn State facility for the first time.

AMHERST, Mass. — The world is currently on track to exceed 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) of global warming by the year 2100, and new research shows that such a scenario would drastically accelerate the pace of sea-level rise. If the rate of global warming continues on its current trajectory, we will reach a tipping point by 2060, past which these consequences would be "irreversible on multi-century timescales," according to researchers.

Humans have used fire for millennia to lure out game when hunting and to convert woodland to agricultural land, leaving their mark on the landscape. New archaeological and paleoenvironmental evidence from Lake Malawi, Africa, shows that the effects on the landscape of humans’ use of fire is tens of thousands of years older than previously thought, according to an international team of researchers.

Mass extinctions are known as times of global upheaval, causing rapid losses in biodiversity that wipe out entire animal groups. Some of the doomed groups linger on before going extinct, and a team of scientists found these “dead clades walking” (DCW) are more common and long-lasting than expected.

Edward Spagnuolo has always been stuck in the past.

As a child, he dreamed of dinosaurs and hunting for fossils buried in the ground. He never outgrew the phase, and he eventually chased his dream to Penn State. Now a junior majoring in geobiology, Spagnuolo has found a new avenue for pursuing his passion – fossil leaves.

Marilyn Fogel, who graduated in 1973 with a degree in biology, may have come to Penn State for the football games, but she left with an appreciation for the interdisciplinary research that would define her career.

There’s an old adage that goes if you can instill in someone a piece of advice, a bit of knowledge, then through them that lives forever. What you started passes on through generations.

That’s fitting for the life and legacy of former Penn State geoscientist Al Guber, who died in January after leaving a lasting mark for decades on his students.

The wrong type of earthquake in an area where there should not have been an earthquake led researchers to uncover the cause for this unexpected strike-slip earthquake — where two pieces of crust slide past each other on a fault — in places where subduction zone earthquakes — one geologic plate slipping beneath another — are common.