Acknowledgments
The first edition of this book evolved out of collaborative efforts on a National Science Foundation (NSF) Course Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) grant (#0737335). The goal of our NSF project was to make the science of scientific ocean drilling research accessible to educators. We set out to write seven data‐rich exercises for the undergraduate classroom. However, we accomplished much more than we set out to do – we essentially developed an entire undergraduate course curriculum that explores the record of Earth's climate history. We had written a book. The first edition of this book would not have happened without the initial funding from NSF, as well as the support of the Consortium of Ocean Leadership, the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP; formerly the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program), and Antarctic Geological Drilling Program (ANDRILL). We are especially grateful to Leslie Peart, former education director of Ocean Leadership's Deep Earth Academy, who was instrumental in facilitating education and outreach for IODP for many years. It was her vision of the School of Rock Program (which still exists today) that seeded the collaboration of the author team. We are thankful to Cathy Manduca, director of the Science Education Resource Center (SERC) at Carleton College; her insight into the undergraduate curriculum, workshop development, and dissemination were valuable to us, as they have been to the broader geoscience education community. We are grateful to Eric Pyle, professor of geology at James Madison University (JMU) and evaluator of our NSF grant; his input gave us much to consider about teaching and learning. The first edition of the book could not have come together so smoothly without the skilled help of students Serena Dameron and Sarah Rangel, and graphic design consultant Jason Mallett. We thank students Allison (Ali) Dim, Kate Kaldor, and Casey Maslock for helping with some new content for the second edition. We greatly appreciate the constructive comments from colleagues who reviewed draft chapters from the first or second editions. Their scientific and/or pedagogical expertise helped improve the quality of the book, as did the feedback from our students who used draft versions of these chapters in classes and labs. We specifically thank: Stephen Schellenburg, Tom Cronin, Robert DeConto, Steve Petsch, Debbie Thomas, Jackie Hams, David Voorhees, Leilani Arthurs, Paul Holm, Bill Lukens, Kaustubh Thirumalai, Terry Quinn, David Elliot, Berry Lyons, Francine McCarthy, John Olesik, Jim Brey, Tom Gill, Steve Hovan, several anonymous reviewers, and the many faculty whom we have interacted with in professional development workshops that used this book. Very special thanks to graphic designer, Jess Lambert, for working with Kate Pound and the rest of the authors to develop the cover design for the second edition. We would also like to thank the editors, and the development and production teams at Wiley, especially Ian Francis, Delia Sandford, Anna Bassett, Kevin Fung, Marilyn Grant, and Vivien Ward for their guidance on the first edition, and Rosie Hayden, Andrew Harrison, and Karthika Sridharan for their guidance on the second edition. What fantastic, professional teams to work with!
This content of the book is based in large part upon practices and results of scientific ocean drilling, especially scientific work of IODP, and its predecessor programs (i.e. ODP and DSDP), as well as the scientific work of the ANDRILL program. While program names have changed through different funding cycles (and will again in the future), the international commitment to support scientific ocean drilling has advanced the research community's understanding of how Earth's climate system works. These insights are an important backdrop for understanding modern climate change, for testing models of future climate, and for evidence‐based science communication with educators, students, the public‐at‐large, and policy makers.
Book Introduction to the Second Edition for Students and Instructors
Dear Students and Instructors,
We are excited to provide you with the opportunity to learn about Earth's climate of the past, and its relevance to climate of the present and future, through an inquiry‐based curricula design. This is the second edition of Reconstructing Earth's Climate History – Inquiry‐Based Exercises for Lab and Class, and we have worked hard to maintain the best content of the first edition, while also expanding topics, updating exercises, and reorganizing content to scaffold data‐rich material and support your learning. As the title of the book implies, this is a book that has you, the student, playing an important active role; you are to make observations, ask questions, wrestle with uncertainly, interact with your classmates and instructor, and work to synthesize information, pose evidence‐based hypotheses, and infer broad implications from case study examples. All of this is part of the process of scientific inquiry, which aims to build your content knowledge and observational and analytical skills.
In order to get the most out of your work with this book, we want you to know why and how we designed it, as well as what is new to the second edition. We think understanding the design will give you a roadmap of what to expect as you use this book to reconstruct Earth's climate history.
Motivation and Purpose
There has never been a more critical time for students to understand how the Earth works. Understanding the causes and potential consequences of Earth's changing climate are of particular importance because modern climate change is an issue that impacts economies, societies, environments, and lifestyles; furthermore these impacts are distributed differently across countries and populations. The context for understanding global warming today lies in the records of Earth's past. This is demonstrated by decades of paleoclimate research by scientists in organizations such as the International Ocean Discovery Program, the Antarctic Geological Drilling Program, the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center's Ice Core Laboratory, and many others. The purpose of this book is to put key data and published case studies of past climate change at your fingertips, so that you can experience the nature of paleoclimate research and discovery. You will evaluate data, practice developing and testing hypotheses, and infer the broader implications of scientific results. It is our philosophy that addressing how we know is as important as addressing what we know about past climate.
Use of Real Data
The chapters in the book can be considered multipart exercises that build upon authentic data from peer‐reviewed scientific publications. One of the most effective means of conveying science data is through figures – graphs, photos, diagrams. Therefore, unlike many books where the figures supplement the text, in this book the figures are the central elements of every exercise. Questions and tasks within each exercise are constructed around the data or concepts presented in figures. This means that it is essential to carefully examine the figures and diligently read their captions. This may not be easy at first, but with practice (and this book will give you lots of it!) it will become second nature.
Content Topics
The content topics chosen for this book support the Essential Principles of Climate Science (USGCRP, 2009; Table 1)1. The relevance of investigating past climates for understanding modern climate change and for predicting future climate change is evident throughout the book. Reconstructing past climate change relies on investigations of multiple archives, including tree rings, corals, speleothems, ice, sediment, and sedimentary rock. In this book we focus primarily on climate change during the Cenozoic Era (the last 66.0 million years of Earth’s history; see timescale inside front cover of book). We therefore draw largely from ocean sediment core and ice core records, which are valuable archives of the past 200 million years and past 500 thousand years, respectively. The second edition expands on this to include more terrestrial records as well. As you will see, obtaining detailed natural records of Earth's climate history is a challenging undertaking, often involving expeditions to remote locations, complex coring technology, careful planning and execution, and hard work. Once obtained, paleoclimate records must be systematically described, ages must be determined, and indirect evidence (i.e. proxies) of past climate must be analyzed.
