A PhD graduate assistantship is available in the Department of Geography at UGA beginning in August 2022. The successful candidate will support a NSF-funded project investigating whether centennial-scale variations in the Indian Summer Monsoon are linked to fluctuations in summer temperature and if the widespread abandonment of Bronze Age settlements in the northern India corresponds to a short-lived interval of extreme aridity at 4200 cal yr BP. Emily Niederman (M.S. Geography, UGA) successfully defended her thesis “Evidence of abrupt hydroclimate and environmental change in the Garhwal Himalaya, India through an application of non-destructive, radiological methods to lacustrine sediment”. Congratulations Master Niederman! A paper published in Scientific Reports, led by Emily Niederman and co-authored by Professor Bahadur Kotlia (Kumaun University), documents a major hydroclimate anomaly in the Garhwal Himalaya at 4200 cal year BP that is coincident with the onset of de-urbanization and the deterioration of the Indus civilization. A paper published in Quaternary Research, led by Stephen Cooper and co-authored by Scott Reinemann (Sinclair College) and Bryan Mark and Jim DeGrand (The Ohio State University), assessed the response of the subalpine forest in Great Basin National Park to hydroclimate variability and wildfire during the last two millennia. A special issue entitled “South Asia: Last 5 ka”, published in Quaternary International and guest edited by Professor B. S. Kotlia, Dr. Anoop Kumar and Porinchu, provides an overview of mid- to late-Holocene climate and environmental change in South Asia. A grant from the Great Basin Heritage Area Partnership will support on-going dendroclimatological research, in collaboration with colleagues at The Ohio State University and Sinclair College, on climate variability and wildfire in Great Basin National Park. Emma Benedict, a first-year undergraduate student majoring in Geography, has joined the ECL. Emma will be working on sediment samples collected as a part of the NSF supported Indian Summer Monsoon project.
