Workshop Announcement: Climate Refugia

Climate Refugia
Joint Inference from Fossils, Genetics, and Models
August 1-3, 2012, Eugene, Oregon
Workshop Organizers: Dan Gavin (University of Oregon), Feng Sheng Hu (University of Illinois) and Solomon Dobrowski (University of Montana)

http://geography.uoregon.edu/envchange/refugia/

This workshop will bring together scientists for three days of presentations and discussion on the topic of the persistence of plant and animal populations through periods of significant climate change. The most recent 20,000 years provides several instances of rapid climate change, and yet little extinction, fully independent of impacts by humans, has occurred through these climate changes. How did populations persist through abrupt climate change? What can be learned from this history to gauge extinction risk from ongoing climate changes? Results from distinctly different fields must be simultaneously considered to understand the complex histories of any species. Genetics, paleoecological records, and modeling past climates and species distributions each provide insight into this question. How to obtain a true "joint inference" from these fields remains elusive, but recent advances within each field may allow for more explicit interactions between scientists.

The workshop is aimed at scientists who have, or wish to, work across at least two of the three disciplines (paleoecology, phylogeography, and species distribution modeling/paleoclimatology). Space for attending this workshop is very limited. A limited amount of funding is available for early-career and international participants. See the web page for additional information.