CREAF talks with Crystal McMichael

In this talk, Crystal will present an overview of her recent work on how past human activities (over the last several thousand years) affect modern tropical forests. Her talk will use a combination of empirical data and modelling to show:

1. the distribution of people across tropical forests, with a specific focus on Amazonia,
2. how people modified these forests in the past, and

3. how the legacies of past forest modifications may still be apparent in modern observations. 

    

Who is Crystal McMichael?

Crystal McMichael is an Associate Professor in the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics at the University of Amsterdam. She is a tropical ecologist, paleoecologist and biogeographer, with a focus on human-environment interactions in the Neotropics. She is currently looking how past and present human activities affect modern tropical ecosystems. Her research group has recently generated models of the distributions of people across landscapes in the pre-Columbian and post-Columbian (colonial) periods, and how people may have enriched or depleted certain types or species of plants.