{"id":6639,"date":"2018-04-23T01:06:56","date_gmt":"2018-04-22T17:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/ancient-arctic-plant-dna-unlocks-climate-change-past\/"},"modified":"2022-12-07T13:08:29","modified_gmt":"2022-12-07T05:08:29","slug":"ancient-arctic-plant-dna-unlocks-climate-change-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/ancient-arctic-plant-dna-unlocks-climate-change-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Ancient Arctic plant DNA unlocks climate change from the past"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trekking across the Arctic tundra and crossing ice-blue fjords, setting up camp in sub-zero temperatures and staying vigilant for polar bears is just a typical research day for paleoclimatologist Sarah Crump.<\/p>\n

Crump is a PhD student with the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research<\/a> (INSTAAR) at the University of Colorado Boulder in the US. She is investigating how plant communities on Baffin Island in northern Canada have responded to climate change through time, as far back as 10,000 years ago.<\/p>\n

Most of Baffin Island lies above the Arctic Circle, an area known as the world\u2019s \u2018climate change barometer\u2019. Crump\u2019s research involves drilling down into lake beds on the island and extracting cores of mud that contain ancient plant DNA. By analysing the DNA in these sediment cores, Crump can determine what grew in the Arctic at a particular time and in what climate.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile the whole Earth is currently warming inexorably, Arctic temperatures are skyrocketing. The Arctic is expected to warm about twice as much as the rest of the planet by the end of this century,\u201d says Crump.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can peer into the past to learn how Arctic ecosystems have responded to past warming in order to predict what will happen as the Arctic warms rapidly now and in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Crump and her colleague dig down deep into a lake bed to extract sediment, which contains ancient DNA. Credit: Zach Montes, Orijin Media.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In stark contrast to the Arctic, Crump travelled to the balmy climes of Perth in January to work with Professor Michael Bunce at Curtin\u2019s Trace and Environmental DNA<\/a> (TrEnD) lab to process the plant DNA from her lake sediment cores.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems a little crazy because I work in the Artic and Perth is about as far away as you can get from there!\u201d Crump says. \u201cBut the TrEnD lab is fantastic. There aren\u2019t many labs in the world that can process ancient DNA as well as it can.\u201d<\/p>\n

To separate plant from other DNA in the sediment cores, Crump uses special assays that only bind to plant DNA. She selectively amplifies these and uses a sequencing instrument to identify the base pairs that make up each DNA fragment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we then do is compare all these DNA base pairs to a reference database and then you get your results of what plant taxa were around the lake at that time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Crump
Crump and her team cross a river on Baffin Island. Credit: Zach Montes, Orijin Media.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Crump and her colleagues have so far identified a range of typical Arctic tundra shrubs, berries, aquatic grasses and other vegetation that grew during the last glacial cycle.<\/p>\n

\u201cAround 7,000 years ago on Baffin Island following the last glaciation, glaciers were retreating and it was warmer. We can see when certain plant species show up, including woody shrubs that were important to the ecosystem then. Everything we\u2019ve found looks similar to Arctic ecosystems today.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne plant that we\u2019re really interested in is dwarf birch. It\u2019s expanding northward as the climate warms and is changing Arctic ecosystems in major ways. By studying how dwarf birch responded to past warm periods, we hope to be able to better predict how plant communities will change as the Arctic continues to warm.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Sarah
Sarah Crump is dwarfed by an iceberg. Credit: Zach Montes, Orijin Media.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Crump\u2019s research is supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society, and her work at the TrEnD lab was facilitated through a grant partnership between Curtin and the University of Colorado Boulder.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot many people in my subfield are doing this kind of work yet, I think it\u2019s going to be a big part of the future about how to do things. It\u2019s really fun to be on the leading edge of this research by coming to Curtin and working in a forward-looking lab.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Crump’s not trekking across the Arctic or working in the lab, she helps to run a Women in Science and Engineering group at her university, and also advocates for better communication of science outside the academic realm.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really easy to get sucked into the ivory tower mentality of research. We can talk amongst ourselves but we need to do a much better job of letting the public know what we\u2019re doing and why it matters. It makes us more accountable and drives us to work on problems that are relevant,\u201d explains Crump.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will also help improve trust between the public and science which, at least in the US, is a hot topic right now. There\u2019s a lot of distrust of climate scientists in the US, and we need to work on those relationships if we\u2019re going to be turning our research conclusions into policy action, which is one of the main goals when you\u2019re working on something like climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Learn more about Sarah Crump\u2019s Arctic research<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paleoclimatologist Sarah Crump is literally digging up the past to predict how the Arctic may be affected by future climate change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4182,"featured_media":6640,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_research-areas":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"research-areas":[],"class_list":["post-6639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment"],"acf":{"post_options":{"":null,"additional_content":{"title":"","content":"","image":false},"related_courses":[{"title":"Applied Geology","qualification":"Bachelor of Science (Applied Geology)","link":"http:\/\/courses.curtin.edu.au\/course_overview\/undergraduate\/geology","description":"","faculty":"Science and Engineering"}],"credits":{"author":"","photographer":"","media":false},"display_author":true,"banner":{"image":false}}},"featured_image":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Crump6-1000x500.jpg","author_meta":{"first_name":"Zoe","last_name":"Taylor","display_name":"Zoe Taylor"},"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-22 06:34:55","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6639"},{"taxonomy":"research-areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-areas?post=6639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}