Kevin Anchukaitis | The Past Landscapes Lab

Kevin J Anchukaitis
Professor of Earth Systems Geography
School of Geography, Development and Environment
ENR2 Building, Office S514
email: kanchukaitis@arizona.edu
github: kanchukaitis
Google Scholar: [link]
cv: [PDF]

Kevin is a climate scientist, paleoclimatologist, dendrochronologist, and earth systems geographer specializing in the reconstruction and analysis of climate variability and change over the Common Era and the interactions between climate and human society. He uses an array of techniques to develop and interpret evidence for past, present, and future climate dynamics across a range of temporal and spatial scales, from local to global and interannual to millennial. These include dendroclimatology, climate field reconstruction and spatiotemporal data analysis, stable and radiogenic isotopes, forward and numerical modeling of paleoclimate proxies, and the integration of paleoclimate data with climate models. He holds joint faculty appointments in Geosciences and the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, is affiliated faculty in Latin American Studies, and is currently the chair of the Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Global Change.

Talia Anderson
PhD student, Geography
M.A. 2020, Geography
email: taliaanderson@email.arizona.edu
website: https://taliaanderson.github.io/

Talia graduated from the University of Minnesota with a dual-degree in Geography and Spanish Studies. She specializes in the study of Latin American coupled socio-environmental systems across different spatiotemporal scales and during her undergraduate training developed and analyzed new Guatemalan tree-ring chronologies in order to study how climate change might impact forests in Central America. She continues to investigate the past, present, and future of climate change impacts on Central American using climate model simulations and observational data, focusing on both the geophysical aspects of climate variability and change and societal vulnerability. Before moving to Arizona, she worked for the TRACE (Tropical Responses to Altered Climate Experiment) project, a forest warming experiment in Puerto Rico. For her master's research, Talia was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study the hydroclimate variability of wetland environments in the Chilean Altiplano. For her Ph.D. research, Talia is investigating climate variability and the socio-ecological impacts of climate change on water resources and agriculture in Guatemala, supported by a grant from the US National Science Foundation as well as the Transect of the Americans Pathways Program.

Julie Edwards
Ph.D. student, Geography
M.A. 2020, Geography
email: julieedwards@email.arizona.edu
Google Scholar: [Link]
website: https://julieedwardspaleo.github.io/

Julie received her bachelor’s degree in Geography and Environmental Studies from UCLA. She then worked as a GIS technician at an international aid and development nonprofit. Before coming to the University of Arizona, Julie was also a research assistant at UCLA and California State University, Northridge. Julie's research focuses on using high-resolution quantitative analysis of tree rings for climate reconstruction and to identify and interpret climate variability and extremes (including volcanic eruptions) in the paleoclimate record. Julie is a specialist in using Quantitative Wood Anatomy to understand seasonal and finer scale temperature signals in tree rings, and her dissertation research on high-resolution reconstructions of temperature variability at the North American treeline is supported by a grant from the US National Science Foundation.

Kira Harris
Ph.D. student, Geography
M.A. 2022, Geography
email: kiraharris@email.arizona.edu

Kira received a B.S. in Earth Systems Sciences from the Ohio State University. Her previous research focused on how sedimentology and riverbed morphology affect surface water-groundwater interactions. She also helped develop the Virtual Ice Explorer, a virtual field experience tool that allows people to explore remote polar and alpine field sites visited by researchers at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center. She is interested in multi-proxy paleoclimatology, organic geochemistry, dendroclimatology, and climate field reconstructions. Her Masters thesis research was on variability and trends across multiple timescales (decadal to millennial) in the North American Monsoon during the Holocene. Her Ph.D. research will continue to focus on Holocene climate variability in the Americas. Outside of research, she enjoys running, hiking, and learning about new plants and rocks.

Isabel González
Master's student, Geography
email: aigonzalezmendez@arizona.edu

Isabel joined the lab in Fall 2022. She graduated from Universidad Rafael Landivar, Guatemala, with a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Sciences. She then worked at the National Institute of Seismology, Volcanology, Meteorology,and Hydrology (INSIVUMEH) as the research coordinator of the Climate Change unit in the department of Research and Meteorological Services. Her current research focuses on lowland tropical dendrochronology in Mesoamerica and pioneering the use of new species in order to study the climate mechanisms that shape precipitation and temperature variability in this region.

Would you like to join us as a postdoctoral research scholar working on paleoclimatology? Check out our Opportunities page for national fellowships or current openings