Michael King
Western Colorado University, CO·Earth & Environmental Science
Predicting how life on land will respond to a rapidly warming planet is hard, because the warming now projected for the coming century has no match in recorded human history. Deep time does contain matches.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Ecology & Evolution
Biology
- Topics
Cretaceous Thermal Maximum
hyperthermal
paleoclimate
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2030
What they work on
- Establish a refined chronology of terrestrial ecosystem change across the Cretaceous Thermal Maximum using radioisotopic ages, carbon-isotope chemostratigraphy, eggshell and soil (pedogenic) carbonate, and zircon dating.
- Build open-access databases of Cretaceous plant and animal biodiversity through space and time from Mongolia's Gobi Basin and North America's Western Interior Basin, including diets, migration and range potential, and habitat needs.
- Calculate the rate, duration and magnitude of ecosystem destabilization and recovery on land during this hyperthermal event, using the integrated biodiversity and geochronology datasets.
- Reconstruct past temperature and precipitation from geochemical proxies to test how habitat evolution, shifting ranges and destabilizing food webs affected ecosystem resilience and species threat under extreme warming.
More about the research
About 95 million years ago Earth passed through the Cretaceous Thermal Maximum, an interval of extreme heat driven by rising atmospheric carbon dioxide, with a temperature rise roughly triple what is projected for the end of the 21st century. Its ocean effects are documented: widespread oxygen loss and the extinction of about 80% of marine life. What happened to land ecosystems is largely unknown, and that is the gap this collaborative United States-South Africa project addresses.
Why it matters
The rock record is the only source of real-world data on how land ecosystems behave under warming as extreme as that now projected. By measuring the rate, duration and magnitude of extinction and recovery on land during the Cretaceous Thermal Maximum, and identifying what made some ecosystems resilient, this work could help identify tipping points of ecosystem decline that carry economic risk, and inform how biodiversity loss under future warming is anticipated.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Celina Suarez
University of Arkansas, AR·Earth & Environmental Science
Establish a refined chronology of terrestrial ecosystem change across the Cretaceous Thermal Maximum, using carbon-isotope chemostratigraphy and radioisotopic dating of zircon, eggshell and pedogenic (soil-formed) carbonates.
Lucien Nana Yobo
Texas A&M University-College Station, TX·Earth & Environmental Science
Determine the timing, duration and eruption rates of the Caribbean Large Igneous Province by U-Pb dating of zircon crystals with CA-ID-TIMS, using ash layers from ocean drilling cores and Colombian field sections.
Ryan Leary
New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, NM·Earth & Environmental Science
Reconstruct paleohydrology, including flow depth, slope and water discharge, of Late Cretaceous to early Eocene river deposits in Laramide basins using quantitative fluvial stratigraphy.
The school
Western Colorado University: 2 labs on PI Pages.
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