INSTAAR's research is truly global in scope, not only spanning latitudes, elevations, and timescales, but crossing multiple science disciplines. This wide range increases our ability to help solve the challenging environmental issues that confront our world.
Delve into the long-term collaborative efforts led by INSTAAR members
INSTAAR's national and international collaborations magnify our efforts and frame our work in a larger context. We lead and manage long-running research programs around the world including two U.S. Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) programs.
Dynamic Water
critical zone project
INSTAAR researchers work across a broad range of timescales, reconstructing environments of the past, studying present conditions and processes, and improving predictions of our uncertain future.
About half of our faculty fellows study past environments and processes. Most of the focus is on the recent geologic past within the last ~2.6 million years (Quaternary period). Many studies are further focused on the last ice age (~115,000 to ~12,000 years ago) and/or the subsequent warmer and more climatically stable Holocene epoch when humans developed intensive agriculture.
Studies within one timescale often help increase understanding in another timescale. For example, measuring carbon dioxide levels in ice cores improves understanding of past environments which, in turn, feeds into climate models that can make better predictions of future climate change.
The height of each colored box is weighted by the number of INSTAAR Faculty Fellows researching that discipline/timescale (as of early 2022).
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