Environmental changes have long affected human history and activity. Variations in climate have punctuated historical times; the warmth of Roman times and the early Medieval period allowed vineyards to extend into northern England, the Little Ice Age beginning in the 14th century.
Today environmental changes appear all the more impactful, not least because they interact with a greatly expanded and growing world population.
To understand these changes and their impact, we need to look at the whole Earth system. These impacts may affect our lives, our standard of living, our livelihoods, as well as world business, economics, and politics.
At Knowing Earth, we have considerable experience in researching the climate, especially past climate changes, and how these changes have affected depositional systems and life on Earth. By understanding this past record we can provide insights into future changes.
We provide this through consultancy, lecture courses, workshops, and reports and through our atlases and other resources
Today environmental changes appear all the more impactful, not least because they interact with a greatly expanded and growing world population.
To understand these changes and their impact, we need to look at the whole Earth system. These impacts may affect our lives, our standard of living, our livelihoods, as well as world business, economics, and politics.
At Knowing Earth, we have considerable experience in researching the climate, especially past climate changes, and how these changes have affected depositional systems and life on Earth. By understanding this past record we can provide insights into future changes.
We provide this through consultancy, lecture courses, workshops, and reports and through our atlases and other resources
Climate Change
Climate change has become synonymous with all environmental issues in much of the mainstream media. This is a problem because it obfuscates cause and effect.
Climate changes on all scales. The human effects we are documenting today are partly a consequence of increases in greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, but also of land-use change and urbanization. At the root of these is population growth, and the understandable desire of that growing population to enjoy a better quality of life. We have extensive expertise in climatology and oceanography, especially climate change in the geological past. We are actively working with Earth system modelling research groups worldwide to understand the Earth system better |
Land use
Land use is a major environmental issue that is too often forgotten. An exception is the deforestation of the Amazon, largely for cattle pasture. The loss of wetlands, prairie, and forests removes carbon dioxide sinks and affects soil stabilization and local water balance. Urbanization directly affects local temperature, but especially water run-off. This is a complex issue. One way to assess this is through spatial databases and remote sensing techniques. Modeling also provides a way to determine the implications of changes to land use.
We are using our experience with spatial databasing, climate change, and historical environmental change to provide advice to decision-makers. |
Biodiversity
Biodiversity refers to the number and morphological variation of life on Earth. For many people, biodiversity means pictures in the news of cute owls in the forests of NW North America, or summer butterfly numbers here in the UK. But it is much more important to us than these headlines and cuddly toys.
Biodiversity is fundamental to filling new niches and ecosystems as the Earth system changes. These changes may be forced by natural perturbations and/or human activity (land-use change, urbanization, agriculture). But the response of biota to environmental change is rate-dependent. Some organisms can respond quickly to change by virtual of their ecology, whilst others may take 100s or even 1000s of years to respond. Today these responses have been further compromised by human-built barriers. We have also reduced biodiversity, so the pool of ‘ingredients’ for responding to change is more limited. The question is, what will the impact of this be? We are actively supporting research groups modelling biodiversity changes in the past. We are now looking to expand this to the present-day working with experts in the field using our knowledge and experience of climate change, biodiversity, and analytical methods. |
Water
Water is fundamental to life on Earth and has long dictated the location of human activity and development. Today we are faced with two major problems: too much water and too little water.
This is not a new problem, as we can see when we look through history. But today the combination of population growth, economic needs, land-use changes, and environmental change means that the hydrological system is increasingly important. The challenge is how to manage water. Have a look at our section on Water to see what we are working on. |
Surface Processes
Surface processes relate to chemical, physical and biological responses at the Earth’s surface between the climate and solid Earth (atmosphere and geosphere, respectively). This includes weathering and erosion, the transport of sediment and other particles, and deposition in sink areas. Today climate change has a significant effect on these processes. The Geological Record provides clues that can help us understand how the system behaves and what to expect.
As geologists, we have considerable experience in understanding surface processes. Our paleogeography and lithofacies retrodiction work investigate the interaction between tectonics, climate, and depositional systems |
Geohazard
Geohazards include large-scale geological threats such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and local-scale events, especially slope-failure, which can have sudden catastrophic impacts on local communities.
By using our databases of tectonic environments together with neotectonic data, we can assess the hard presented by large-scale geological threats. |