Science communication methods and strategies for paleoscientists

Why communicate our science? Aside from our duty to let taxpayers, who largely fund our research, know what their money has been spent on, our motivation to communicate stems mainly from a desire to make a contribution towards a more sustainable world. Given the scale of the environmental challenges facing the planet and human societies today, doing only research is not enough. There is a clear need for us, as scientists, and even more as early-career scientists, to communicate to a wider audience than just our direct peers

Communicating the relevance of paleo research in the current societal environment

It is not an easy task for paleoscientists to communicate the relevance of their research to policy makers and funders. However, an increase in catastrophic environmental calamities related to climate change (e.g. landslide, droughts, flooding) demands a response both in terms of policy-making and future governmental decisions. Often, climate change in the recent past was linked to major shifts in human behavior, which masks the relative contribution of humans and nature. For example, the 4.2 ka BP aridification event was so severe that it may have triggered the collapse of several large civilizations (the Old Kingdom in Egypt and the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia; Gibbons 1993). Compilations of long-term records of past variability can help reduce the uncertainties on past, present and future climate changes, and thus support informed societal decisions. Therefore, policymakers should (and some may argue, must) consider the long-term perspective provided by paleoscience research

Early-career paleoscientists meet in the mountains of Aragon

Three days prior to the 5th PAGES Open Science Meeting (OSM), 80 ambitious early-career scientists (PhD students and postdoctoral researchers) met in the restored village of Morillo de Tou, Spain. The remote setting in the Pyrenees, the old style buildings constructed of turbidites, and the clear and sunny weather made this place an inspiring location to discuss past climate, environment and human interactions. Despite some grumblings about cold coffee served in small cups, the conference was a high-energy affair that promoted connections

Refining the sampling approach for the massive coral Diploastrea heliopora for δ18O-based paleoclimate applications

International audienceStudies on the Indo-Pacific coral Diploastrea have demonstrated that this genera can potentially be used to generate multi-century length climate reconstructions, however some concerns remain regarding sampling protocols. This study further explores the utility of Diploastrea heliopora for paleoclimatic reconstructions by examining δ18O along short coral cores of D. heliopora and Porites lutea from Kandavu, Fiji. These results indicate that sampling of the columellar part of the corallite in D. heliopora is optimal to capture the full annual δ18O cycle and that bi-monthly (0.5 mm) sampling resolution is the optimal temporal resolution for the Kandavu D. heliopora. Results from Kandavu D. heliopora show high intra-core reproducibility as well as a significant correlation to a δ18O record from a nearby Porites colony (monthly resolution: r = 0.71, n = 186, df = 54, p = 0.01; annual resolution: r = 0.59, n = 16, df = 16, p = 0.01). At our Fiji study site, D. heliopora and Porites skeletal δ18O have similar sensitivities to sea surface temperature and sea surface salinity, validating the approach of using both coral species to create robust climate reconstructions. These results indicate that microanalyses of the columellar portion of D. heliopora skeleton produce time-series δ18O results similar in quality to that extracted from Porites