Up Close: The Puzzle of Past Landscapes

Have you ever wondered how we know how the landscape, forest, and climate have changed over millennia? The answer is “proxy” data, which can be used as direct indicators of the past. For example, we can use preserved pollen in lake sediment to tell us about what types of plants were present hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Piece together the power of proxies with Diana Tirlea, the Assistant Curator of Quaternary Environments at the Royal Alberta Museum, in this virtual Up Close talk. Learn about the diversity of pollen and plant macrofossils, and how they and other proxies gathered from ice patches, lake sediment, pollinators, and mountain caves, can help us learn about Alberta’s past.