I ka wa ma mua ka wa ma hope

“Our future is in the past”

Humans have reorganized Earth’s climate in just the past few centuries, reversing a 50-million-year-long cooling trend in a geologic instant. Yet the anthropocene (sensu lato) poses a fundamental challenge: human impacts have unfolded over several decades to centuries, an intermediate timescale represented neither in instrumental data nor in geologic archives. These intermediate timescales are critical for linking present-day observations to long-term baselines, deconvolving anthropogenic forcing from natural variability, and predicting near-term climate outcomes.

My research program seeks to place recent human-driven climate changes, and their impacts on marine ecosystems, into geologic context. Specifically, I integrate observational data from long-term monitoring with paleobiological and geochemical proxy information from high-resolution sediment cores to capture annual-to-millennial marine ecosystem responses to climate extremes.

With long-term data on Earth system interactions, I ask:

1. Over what timescales, and through which mechanisms, were Earth system tipping points crossed during Cenozoic warming events and under early anthropogenic change?

2. How do human impacts propagate across space and time to transform marine ecosystems?

3. How can past-to-present information be applied to predict future ecosystem scenarios and support marine conservation in the anthropocene?

I co-produce this research to meet Pacific region needs for long-term data that inform integrated land-ocean management planning.

My past and current scientific projects are highlighted below. For a more detailed view, please see my CV.