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What a Historical Investigation Can Tell Us About Human Resiliency Today

Wednesday, January 18, 2017
Casco Bay, fish pound, 1908.jpg

Just over two hundred years ago, the Tambora volcano, a massive cone volcano in Indonesia, erupted, altering atmospheric composition and causing lowered temperatures globally.  The eruption occurred in April, leading to agricultural ruin in the following boreal summer. Clues into how human societies modified fishing practices to cope with a failed harvest gives us insight into how a drastic global climatic event might be handled today. NE CSC Science Coordinator Michelle Staudinger, Postdoctoral Research Fellow Alex Bryan, and Affiliated Investigator Adrian Jordaan with UMass, Amherst’s Environmental Conservation department, contributed to this study.  The paper, “Tambora and the mackerel year: Phenology and fisheries during an extreme climate event", by Karen Alexander et al., came out in Science Advances on January 18, 2017.

 

 

Read the USGS Press Release >>

Read the UMass Amherst Press Release >>

 

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