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Prof Frank Chambers

Professor of Physical Geography

NATURAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
Email:
fchambers@glos.ac.uk
I teach and research in climate change and in palaeoecology, using the reconstruction of past environments to ascertain the degree of human impact upon vegetation and climate. Chevron icon

Biography

I lecture in biogeography, palaeoecology and climate change, and head the university’s Centre for Environmental Change and Quaternary Research.

Frank heads the University’s Centre for Environmental Change and Quaternary Research (CECQR). His research focuses on peat bogs and lake sediments, using chemical signatures, pollen, plant remains and other microfossils, to reconstruct environmental change and past climates. These methods allow the past pattern of vegetation and climate change to be established, to inform nature conservation and to place current projections for future climate change in long-term perspective. Frank has published over 150 papers in these fields. He is an Associate Editor of international journals, The Holocene, and Biodiversity and Conservation.

Qualifications

  • BSc (Hons): Geography, University of Southampton, 1974
  • PhD: Palaeoecology, University of Wales, 1980

Teaching & Research

Research

Accrotelm: Abrupt climate changes recorded over the European land mass was an EC-funded project, led from CECQR at the University of Gloucestershire. It involved 12 European universities, whose scientists devised field- and laboratory protocols for reconstructing the climate of Europe over the past 4.500 years from peats and lake sediments. Subsequently, using the same protocols in South America, a direct correspondence was found between the timing of past climate shifts in the Northern and Southern hemispheres, 2800 year ago and again during the post-Medieval ‘Little Ice Age’.

Publications

More publications from Prof Frank Chambers can be found in the Research Repository.