Fred Andrus

Fred Andrus

Professor

About

My research primarily focuses on reconstructing past human-environment interaction, such as how climate changed in key times and places in prehistory, how people adapted to their changing world, and how we may have altered our environment, such as through pollution or ecosystem alteration. I also reconstruct Quaternary paleoclimate and ecology based on fossil remains independent of humans. In nearly all cases I utilize sclerochronological approaches to creating isotope time-series data, using bivalve, gastropod, algal, and other skeletal remains.

My recent projects have focused on samples from the Southeastern US Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic coasts, the Pacific coasts of North America from Southern California to the Aleutian Islands, coastal Peru, the Caribbean and central America and Greenland. Most of my work has involved measuring stable oxygen and carbon isotopes and radiocarbon in bio-carbonates, stable nitrogen isotopes in the organic fraction of bio-carbonates, along with some growth structure and elemental analyses.”