🔥 Call for Abstracts – #EGU26 Interdisciplinary Session: Cultural Pyroscapes Through Time ITS3.5/BG5.6 🔥 📅 Deadline 15/01/2026. @gilromera.bsky.social @hcadd.bsky.social @thatpollenguy.bsky.social 👉[https://lnkd.in/eWYtRsge] #Wildfire #Palaeoecology #Archaeology #ClimateChange #FireEcology

It seems a little early to start talking about the pollen-hay fever season in Canberra, but over the weekend we saw the first hint of elevated pollen levels in Cupressaceae pollen (Cypress pine family) - 14 grains/m3 - still LOW, but hinting at the beginnings of elevated levels to come.

Our latest paper on degradation of peatland systems on King Island (Lutruwita/Tasmania) shows how vulnerable peatlands are under current land management practices. Is the sudden loss if ~4000 years of peat from this site a “canary in the coal mine” for Tasmania/Australia? doi.org/10.1111/aec....

Migrating bogong moths use the stars and Earth’s magnetic field to find ancestral summer caves each year theconversation.com/migrating-bo...

Bogong moths use a stellar compass for long-distance navigation at night Each spring, billions of Bogong moths migrate up to 1,000 km They use stellar cues and the Earth’s magnetic field for long-distance nocturnal navigation towards a specific destination. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#ICCB2025 great to be able to present alongside Ramya Bala Prabhakaran, Meghna Agarwala, and Patrick Moss in the “using Palaeoecology for Fire Management and Landscape Conservation” session today (organised by Ramya).

#ICCB2025 Looking forward to presenting “Palaeoecological records from peat mounds in Tasmania as a tool to advance endangered bird research and inform conservation strategies” as part of the Palaeoecology and Conservation Biology session on Thursday June 19, 2.15 PM - 3:15 PM, Meeting Room P4

Connections and collections: The pope, the prime minister and the ethics of diplomatic gift exchange by @anu-chl.bsky.social Research Fellow Dr Katherine Aigner and Prof Kylie Message-Jones www.abc.net.au/religion/pop...

Does climate play a role in tree longevity? A paleo study in Georgia suggests that might be a possibility: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Another great deep-time palynology paper by Mike MacPhail from the ANU PalaeoWorks Lab @palaeoworks.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... Fossil pollen from Goat Paddock Crater, Kimberley Plateau, are restricted to the Late Cretaceous Epoch. => meteor impact during/before the Mesozoic.

Pollen grains from 123 million years ago show the grooved shape characteristic of eudicots. The findings, from the Lusitanian Basin of Portugal, are the earliest known tricolpate pollen and provide insight into the diversification of flowering plants. In PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Was extinction of New Zealand's avian megafauna an unavoidable consequence of human arrival? Using process-explicit ecological models, the authors show that Moa persistence was not compatible with even low rates of hunting. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The FIRST International Conference on Palaeogenomics will happen in Stockholm, Sweden, June 23-26, 2026! Topics will encompass all corners of ancient DNA research, from humans to wildlife and sediments🧬🦣💀🦠 Save the dates ✅ Check the website icp2026.palaeogenomics.org and follow us for updates!

Wondering what was in the air during the dust storm that passed over Canberra this week? Our daily pollen monitoring slide collected on the morning of the 27/5/25 shows the dense brown particles captured over the event. The fine particles of dust can be seen at 400x magnification.

Great podcast by Madeleine Bessel-Koprek, ANU PhD student, with a fascinating discussion about her research on reconstructing the past vegetation and fire history of Long Island (Tasmania). Outreach stretching 16,750km to the southern shores of Long Island (New York, USA)! spotify.link/aRpInNUeCTb

Supper happy to announce that Dael Sassoon’s documentary Echoes of the Rainforest will be screened at this year’s @egu.eu conference, at the GeoCinema session in room E1 on Tuesday 29 April, 18:50-19:20. Please come along and spread the word for a good turnout! #EGU #MSCA @geo3bcn-csic.bsky.social

Check it out! New speleothem magnetism paper from semi-arid Australia. Led by postdoc Tom Mallet in my #ARC-DECRA www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

great piece of work here! congrats to all the authors but especially my brilliant ANU colleagues Anna Florin and @thatpollenguy.bsky.social

Under Bass Strait's surface lies a vast land humans once called home www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03...

Humans in Africa’s wet tropical forests 150 thousand years ago. The onset of human occupations at Bété I found to be ~150 ka, linking them with Homo sapiens. Plant wax biomarker, stable isotope, phytolith and pollen analyses all point to a wet forest environment. rdcu.be/ebrSR

The summer Elm pollen season is well underway this year with an early start in late January and EXTREME levels experienced over the last few day. Extended and elevated tree pollen seasons in winter and summer are becoming increasingly common in Canberra.

Congratulation to Annika Herbert, @palaeoworks.bsky.social and @ciehf.bsky.social postdoc fellow, on her first sole-author publication! A review of the potential of using magnetic susceptibility to create records of ancient Australian bushfires. Enjoy! www.publish.csiro.au/WF/WF24093

#Australian #ornithologists, can you see benefits in collaboration with a palynologist to better understand bird habitats, movement, migration, diet/feeding strategies, by using pollen analysis? (dm me for the paper, if you can't get past paywall) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1... 🧪🦉🦆🦅🦜

Who wants to go hunting for ancient forests with me in the Canadian Rockies? 🧪⚒️https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/ancient-forest-melting-ice-1.7443094

Still can’t shake the sneezing and wheezing this summer? One of the reasons may be the onset of She Oak (Casuarina) and Chinese Elm (Ulmus parvifolia) summer pollen season - a very CBR phenomenon. This year (and last year) we saw a much earlier onset of these allergenic tree pollen in Canberra

New paper just published in Data Science Journal led by Annika Herbert “Collaborative Effort Towards a FAIR and OPEN Indo-Pacific Pollen Database (IPPD)” The IPPD is a collection of Australian, Southeast Asian, and Oceanian Quaternary pollen records datascience.codata.org/articles/10....

Chinese Elm tree or Ulmus parvifolia pollen is increasing in Canberra this week marking the beginning of the late summer-autumn pollen season. If you are experiencing hay fever symptoms this might be the culprit!

Congratulations to Madeleine Bessell-Koprek on the publication of her 2024 honours project through the Palaeoworks Lab at the School Of Culture, History & Language and Fenner School of Environment and Society at The Australian National University (ANU) link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Wildfires are currently impacting air quality for workers across the Los Angeles region. Exposure to wildfire smoke can cause a range of adverse health effects such as fatigue, coughing, and chronic bronchitis.

We reconstructed 300 yrs of fire history in transverse ranges of CA from fire scars in the Bigcone Douglas-fir. The fire history of chaparral/BCDF may reflect fire history in the LA Basin, to some degree. A paper from Keith Lombardo’s dissertation is here: link.springer.com/content/pdf/...

New study challenges a major theory on why some kangaroos mysteriously went extinct | by Sam Arman theconversation.com/new-study-ch...

LA is on fire. How will Australia cope when bushfires hit Sydney, Melbourne or another major city? By David Bowman theconversation.com/la-is-on-fir...

Pollen and sub-pollen particles: External interactions shaping the allergic potential of pollen | by Sudharsun Venkatesan et al. - Source, chemical and biological interactions, such as changes in soil pH, influence pollen allergenicity. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Canberra's 'forever' hayfever season causing headaches | in CanberraTimes

A 🎄Christmas Eve🎄 update on the pollen and spores counts for 2024.   The grass pollen season continues to be of low intensity   The combined impact of LOW to MODERATE grass pollen, plus Alternaria spores will cause wheezing and sneezing from Christmas Day onwards into January

Great to see the December 2024 issue of Quaternary Australasia out. Lots of great content related to academic staff and student projects, conferences, field trips, and reflections on Quaternary research in Australasia. See more here: aqua.org.au

The increase in heat and moisture over the next few days in Canberra will no doubt exacerbate the rising Alternaria spore counts following recent rains. If you are allergic to airborne spores, take precautions by staying inside, wear a mask and seek advice from your GP and/or pharmacist.

Hay fever and asthma can be triggered by a range of pollen and spores that might be in the air during the spring and summer months. In Canberra the combined impact of grass pollen plus the rise of Alternaria spores can create a cocktail of allergenic particles affecting people across our city.

Great privilege to be a part of launch of “The Landbridge” project held at the State Theatre in Hobart last night. The short film is beautifully produced by Jary Nemo and Lucinda Horrocks of Wind and Sky Productions and enabled by the generous support of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre.

The warmer and wetter weather predicted for the summer months is likely to be conducive to a protracted hay fever season. The warmer and wetter may result in a boost in grass growth plus elevated fungal spore (Alternaria) production. the-riotact.com/warmer-night...

Rheum ribes Polygonaceae Iran

Conversation piece on Raja Ampat excavations showing 50-55ka settlement in Pacific theconversation.com/new-evidence... Also covered in New Scientist www.newscientist.com/article/2443... Original article www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Thanks to Callan Morse (nit.com.au/posts/author...) from National Indigenous Times for covering our recent study on fire in Lutruwita/Tasmania - “Study suggests Tasmanian Aboriginal people managed Country using fire thousands of years earlier than first thought” nit.com.au/20-11-2024/1...

I’m a sedimentary geologist interested in sediment routing systems and their response to changes in climate/tectonics. ⚒️🧪🌊⛰️🏔️ Examples of our work from the Amazon River+fan: Andean mountain building www.nature.com/articles/s41... Hydroclimate + sea-level pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/...

The first Australians used fire to help populate Tasmania 41,000 years ago www.scimex.org/newsfeed/the...

Great news article in the Smithsonian Magazine covering our recent paper in Science Advances - “Researchers Uncover the Oldest Record of Humans Using Fire in Tasmania, Almost 2,000 Years Earlier Than Previously Known” www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/r...

Canberra is going through a severe dry spell with rainfall levels well below average for the period from August to October (according to www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au). This has led to drying off of grasslands and a reduction in pollen production during the peak period of the grass pollen seasoon.

SARS_CoV_2 maybe the most important biological invasion of our lifetime But infectious human diseases are rarely treated as Biological Invasions Collaborations between medical researchers & ecologists are vital to preventing future outbreaks #bioinvasions #biosecurity #onehealth #covid

Is thunderstorm asthma becoming more common? By Kira Morgan Hughes, Deakin University theconversation.com/is-thunderst...