Paleontological Powers of Ten: Issues of Scale in Paleoecology Workshop; Washington, D.C.; September 13-16, 2007

Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

The PIs propose hosting a 4-day workshop to investigate the central issues uniting and dividing the growing field of paleoecology, particularly as they are related to spatio-temporal scale. The workshop will assess how time and space, when considered at diverse scales, shape understanding of past ecological communities and the factors that have caused ecological change through earth history. This workshop is critical for integrating data and improving communication among several distinct areas of paleoecology, each addressing different kinds of fossil preservation, facing different spectra of time-space resolution, and using somewhat different approaches to data collection and analysis. These areas of paleoecological investigation can be circumscribed broadly as marine invertebrate, terrestrial plant and terrestrial vertebrate. The long range goal is to build an effective framework for transmitting paleoecological knowledge at different temporal and spatial scales to ecologists, and ultimately to strengthen the role of paleoecology in evolutionary ecology. The workshop will occur at the Smithsonian Institution September 13th - 16th, 2007 and include 32 including students, postdocs, international scientists and science reporters.