SEMINAR: OI Seminar Series - Craig Groves

Title: Climatic and anthropogenic drivers of river runoff in northeast Madagascar

Abstract: Rivers and their associated watersheds govern the erosion and transport of terrestrial material into the marine environment. In order to characterise the impact of terrestrial runoff on a large tropical embayment in Madagascar, we analysed the skeletal properties of giant corals spanning the past 300 years. By combing spectral luminescence scanning and geochemistry data we decouple 20th century human deforestation effects from rainfall induced soil erosion. Not only do the corals provide the first evidence for Pacific decadal modulation of rainfall over the western Indian Ocean, they highlight the impact of deforestation.

Biography: Craig Grove was born on the 19th March 1982 in Irvine, Scotland. In 2004 he graduated with a 2:1 Master degree in Oceanography from the University of Southampton. Later that year he worked for Othniel shellfish, where he cultivated a number of shellfish species for a global market in Poole harbour. In 2005 he spent 18 months scuba diving around the reefs of Belize as the director of Marine Science for Reef Conservation International. Here, he continuously monitored the coral reef ecosystem and many of the key species which had a commercial or biological significance. During his PhD his focus was reconstructing past climate conditions of the western Indian Ocean using coral core samples, with specific emphasis on global warming and natural climate oscillations, such as ENSO and the PDO.