Jiaying Wu

Hello, everyone, I am a Ph.D student at geography department in University of Georgia (Athens, Georgia). Born in a family with parents studying climate and botany, I have been always fascinated with the interactions between these two categories. Tropical climate was thought to be stable, and tropical vegetation was also considered to be little changed during the last 10,000 years. However, in recent decades, numerous proxy-based paleo-environmental reconstructions, developed for central to southern Costa Rica, have led to the rejection of the assumption of tropical climate and vegetation stability, and also led to the discussion of the influence of anthropogenic impacts on the landscape during prehistoric times. As a paleoclimatologist, understanding how long-term climate varies and disentangling how climate influences landscape change in the geologic past are my top research interests. If we can better characterize how has hydroclimate fluctuated during the Holocene, and how climate change influenced vegetation and landscape change we will be better positioned to predict how projected climate change will influence the Páramo. I am very excited about the potential of my project and I am looking forward to combining my paleohydroclimate reconstructions with what is known of past fire history to interpret landscape change in Costa Rica during the Holocene. ResearchGate link

September 2014