Paleoecologists Marie Champagne, Lysanna Anderson, and Clarke Knight work to obtain lake sediment cores from Wildcat Lake, a coastal site in Point Reyes National Seashore, California, in November 2021. (Photo Credit: Summer Praetorius, USGS)
Summer Praetorius, PhD
Summer is a Research Geologist in the Geology, Minerals, Energy, and Geophysics Science Center. She received a PhD in Oceanography from Oregon State University in 2014. Since joining the USGS in 2016, she has been developing high-resolution paleoceanographic records from the North Pacific to better understand past climate dynamics in this region and interactions with the global climate system.
Summer Praetorius is a paleoceanographer who uses foraminiferal micropaleontology and other geochemical proxies to reconstruct changes in ocean properties in the past (circulation, temperature, and salinity). At the USGS, her work has focused largely on oceanographic changes in the North Pacific from the last Ice Age through the Holocene period. Her research interests include the dynamics of abrupt climate change, the history and climate impacts of the Missoula Floods, interactions between volcanism and climate in the past, ocean hypoxia, and coastal archaeological shell middens as paleoceanographic archives.
Science and Products
Pacific Ocean Patterns, Processes, and Productivity (POP3): Impacts of ancient warming on marine ecosystems and western North America
Projections for AD 2100 suggest warming of +1-4°C in the North Pacific Ocean, which will result in widespread transformations throughout the marine environment and western North America. Many of these changes are beyond the predictive capabilities of current climate models. To better address this future uncertainty, our team is developing a geological framework using past warm intervals as...
Wildcat Lake, California
Paleoecologists Marie Champagne, Lysanna Anderson, and Clarke Knight work to obtain lake sediment cores from Wildcat Lake, a coastal site in Point Reyes National Seashore, California, in November 2021. (Photo Credit: Summer Praetorius, USGS)
Science and Products
Pacific Ocean Patterns, Processes, and Productivity (POP3): Impacts of ancient warming on marine ecosystems and western North America
Projections for AD 2100 suggest warming of +1-4°C in the North Pacific Ocean, which will result in widespread transformations throughout the marine environment and western North America. Many of these changes are beyond the predictive capabilities of current climate models. To better address this future uncertainty, our team is developing a geological framework using past warm intervals as...
Wildcat Lake, California
Paleoecologists Marie Champagne, Lysanna Anderson, and Clarke Knight work to obtain lake sediment cores from Wildcat Lake, a coastal site in Point Reyes National Seashore, California, in November 2021. (Photo Credit: Summer Praetorius, USGS)
Paleoecologists Marie Champagne, Lysanna Anderson, and Clarke Knight work to obtain lake sediment cores from Wildcat Lake, a coastal site in Point Reyes National Seashore, California, in November 2021. (Photo Credit: Summer Praetorius, USGS)