Presentation: Climate and Vegetation of Oregon Over the Past 50 Million Years
November 17 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Monday, November 17, 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Presentation: Climate and Vegetation of Oregon Over the Past 50 Million Years
Presenter: Dr. Greg Retallack, Geology Professor Emeritus, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oregon
Location: Amazon Community Center, 2700 Hilyard St, Eugene
Oregon has a long fossil record of fossil plants and soils revealing dramatic paleoclimatic changes over the past fifty million years. Central Oregon 45 million years ago supported tropical soils and vegetation like that of central America, and the advent of temperate climate and deciduous forests goes back thirty-three million years. The rise of grassland vegetation over the past twenty million years is also revealed in Oregon. Richly organic grassland soils coevolved with grazing mammals to sequester carbon in anticipation of the Pleistocene ice age. Carbon farming aims similarly to enlist soils and livestock to curb modern global warming.
