How have human civilizations responded to significant environmental changes in the past and how have these changes influenced agrarian societies' interactions with their ecological settings and their strategies for managing water, plants, and animals? Dr. Suzanne Pilaar Birch is a Principal Investigator on Collaborative Research: Long Term Relationship between Climate Change and Agricultural Response, a project that investigates these questions by examining past societal responses to environmental stress across the Mediterranean. The project has been awarded a grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation and aims to provide insights into human resilience and sustainable agriculture that could inform present and future challenges. Dr. Pilaar Birch has also received NSF support as a PI on the project Collaborative Research: Sustained Resources: Neotoma: Advancing Earth Science Contributions to Global Change Research via Growth of Well-Curated Open Paleodata. This research focuses on enhancing the Neotoma Paleoecology Database to support global change studies by improving data sharing, curation, and accessibility of paleoecological and paleoenvironmental data. It aims to facilitate large-scale, standardized research on Earth's past climate and biodiversity changes to provide insights into how life adapts to changing climates and human activities. Photo: Dr. Pilaar Birch at one of her field sites in Jordan.
