ESPM C11 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Pack Rat, Radiocarbon Dating

• School: Berkeley
• Department: Environmental Science, Policy, And Management
• Course: ESPM C11
• Professor: Huntsinger Lynn

Document Summary

Unless you study a forest for your whole life, you cannot experiment in a long-term manner. Observational studies need to be done in order to learn about past conditions and what caused changes in them: please briefly define opal phytoliths and how they might be used to study long term change. Opal phytoliths can be used to study change because minerals that are absorbed by plant cells last a long time. A researcher is also able to tell whether the plants were c3 or c4 at the time: please examine the pollen chart below. It is from a lake in a virgin rainforest . There can be layers of charcoal in the soil that you can use carbon dating on to determine when the fire was. A certain type of rat collects plant materials for a den/nest and pees on it.