Playing in the Mud! How Earth Scientists Learn About Climate Change Webinar

Kirsten Menking and her students at Vassar College took sediment cores from the bottom of Lakes Minnewaska and Mohonk and analyzed them to reconstruct the climate history of the Shawangunk Ridge over the past 15,000 or so years. Using pollen, plant fossils, charcoal content, and other indicators, they determined what the landscape must have looked like at the time of the mastodons and also uncovered a nearly two millennium drought that occurred several thousand years ago.