Nick is a paleoclimatologist and paleoecologist interested in understanding the causes and consequences of climatic changes in the world’s grassy ecosystems on time scales spanning decades to millions of years. He uses geochemical proxy methods to study how past climate shifts impacted vegetation structure, paleo-biogeography, and fire dynamics, particularly in African savannas. Examining the geologic record can provide key insights into how grassy ecosystems may respond to modern climate change. Determining how to spatially scale up paleo-proxy evidence from individual records (e.g., ocean and lake sediment cores) to understand landscape-scale processes is a central focus of his work.
