Dr. William C. Daniels
Affiliated researcher
Dr. William C. Daniels received his PhD in Geological Sciences from Brown University in 2017, where he studied Arctic paleoclimate, limnology, biogeochemistry, water isotope systematics, and diatoms. Daniels has continued to work on Arctic systems as a Postdoctoral scholar at University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is particularly interested in applications of lipid biomarkers (GDGTs, diols, leaf waxes) and isotope ratios (D/H, 13C/12C, 15N/14N) for paleoclimate reconstructions.
Dr. Daniels was a Zuckerman Postdoctoral Scholar at the Department of Marine Geosciences, University of Haifa until Sept 2020. During his tenure as a Zuckerman postdoc, Daniels analyzed multiple sedimentary proxies to reconstruct paleoclimate and paleoecology of St. Paul Island, a remote site in the Bering Sea that was a late-persisting home to Pleistocene megafauna such as mammoths. His research explores the connections between ocean and atmosphere circulation during periods of rapid climate change, as well as links between climate and ecology.
Currently William is associated with the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, yet still working on close cooperation with PetroLab as part of his research.
Current Research
Reconstructing Climate and Environments in the Heart of the Bering Strait
The Bering Land Bridge (BLB), which spanned from Eastern Siberia to Alaska during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM; 21 thousand years before present) was a critical geographic feature because it strongly altered global ocean circulation, was a primary habitat for ice-age megafauna, and was a critical corridor for human dispersal into the Americas. As such, its re-submergence following the LGM had important ramifications for global climate and biogeography. Climatic and environmental changes over the BLB/Bering Strait were pronounced, but remain inadequately characterized due to a dearth of adequate terrestrial and oceanic sediment archives. The sedimentary record from Lake Hill, located in St. Paul Island in the center of the Bering Strait, offers a unique opportunity to evaluate deglacial and Holocene climate changes in the region. Upon isolation from the BLB, St. Paul Island became a late-persisting site for the occurrence of woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius); contextualizing the climate in which they lived and perished will offer important insights on the ecology of this important megafauna. The current project aims to perform a multi-proxy investigation of the Lake Hill sedimentary record to complement existing paleoecological records from the site and improve our understanding of the human, faunal, and climatic history of the region.
