MULTI-PROXY PALEOCLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION – THE LEGACY OF R. M. FORESTER

During the last few decades, the field of paleoclimatology has grown to include a rapidly growing number of proxy methods that are used to reconstruct past climatic patterns, causes and impacts. This is especially true for microfaunal and geochemical methods applied to sediments deposited in non-marine and marine aquatic systems. Although experiments conducted under controlled laboratory conditions add value to any proxy method, field-based programs designed to understand climatic control of physical, biological and chemical parameters in modern aquatic systems remain a fundamental tenet of paleoclimatology. Not surprisingly, early paleoclimate projects, such as CLIMAP and COHMAP, relied on faunal and floral species’ ecology inferred from continental-scale collections of modern species distributions paired with climatic data. These and other programs anticipated the now widespread notion that a multi-proxy approach is necessary to understand climate dynamics during key climatic events.

R. M. Forester was a pioneer in the field of Quaternary paleolimnology who recognized early in his career that a multi-proxy approach built on geographically extensive and field-calibrated geochemical and microfossil data sets held the most promise for continental climate reconstruction. I will discuss Forester’s specific contributions to Cenozoic paleoclimatology and the current state of large non-marine, aquatic faunal databases that have grown out of his effort to build one for North American ostracodes.