Prof authors climate textbook
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Cover of the 2012 textbook "Reconstructing Earth�s Climate History: Inquiry-Based Exercises for Lab and Class."
Kate Pound, professor of geology, has helped author a textbook called “Reconstructing Earth’s Climate History: Inquiry-Based Exercises for Lab and Class.”
Pound leads hands-on education and outreach programs for teachers in Minnesota. She was a science educator in the Antarctic Geological Drilling Project (ANDRILL) program in Antarctica in 2007.
Pound’s research focuses on provenance studies and regional tectonics and her teaching responsibilities include: Physical Geology, Glacial Geology, Field Geology, Rocks and Minerals, Sedimentology, General Education Geology courses and Science for Elementary Teachers.
The records of Earth’s past hold the context for understanding global climate change and paleoclimate research by scientists in organizations such as the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, ANDRILL and others demonstrate this.
The purpose of this book is to put key data and published case studies of past climate change at users’ fingertips to experience the nature of paleoclimate reconstruction. Using foundational geologic concepts, the book explores a wide variety of topics including: marine sediments, age determination, stable isotope paleoclimate proxies, Cenozoic climate change, climate cycles, polar climates, and abrupt warming and cooling events.
Readers can evaluate published scientific data, practice developing and testing hypotheses, and infer the broader implications of scientific results. It is the authors’ philosophy that addressing how we know is as important as addressing what we know about past climate change. Making climate change science accessible is the goal of this book’s authors.
The book’s co-authors are Kristen St. John, R. Mark Leckie, Megan Jones and Lawrence Krissek. St. John is a professor of geology at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA, while Leckie is a professor of geology at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Jones teaches in the geology department at North Hennepin Community College and Krissek is a professor in the School of Earth Sciences, Ohio State University.
The book can be ordered from Wiley-Blackwell at http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470658053.html
St. Cloud State University