Kit Hamley
A2C2 IGERT Graduate Fellow
Address: Sawyer Environmental, Grove Street Extension, Orono, ME 04469
Bio:
I am an NSF Graduate Research Fellow at the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine. My academic interests are all fueled by an underlying desire to understand how humans have interacted with and either directly or indirectly altered the environment through time. I am passionate about sharing her experiences through science outreach, video documentaries, and photography. I graduated from Bowdoin College in 2010 and received my MS degree in Quaternary and Climate Science from the University of Maine in 2016.
Research Area:
Human migration into new locations is often marked by dramatic upheavals in biodiversity, via extinction, introductions and land use change. Island and high latitude ecosystems have an increased risk of biodiversity loss in the face of modern human impacts and climate change. Understanding how these ecosystems have fluctuated in the past in response to environmental and human pressures is essential to informing future conservation efforts. For my dissertation, I am investigating two case studies in early human arrival and biodiversity impacts in high latitude biodiversity hotspots: The Falkland Islands of the South Atlantic, and the mammoth steppe of Beringian Alaska.
