Adam Woodhouse

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Lecturer in Past Climates and Earth System Change at Cardiff University

Planktonic foraminifera are a major constituent of ocean floor sediments, and thus have one of the most complete fossil records of any organism. Expeditions to sample these sediments have produced large amounts of spatiotemporal occurrence records throughout the Cenozoic, but no single source exists to house these data. We have therefore created a...

Extinction rates in the modern world are currently at their highest in 66 million years and are likely to increase with projections of future climate change. Our knowledge of modern-day extinction risk is largely limited to decadal-centennial terrestrial records, while data from the marine realm is typically applied to high-order (> 1 million year)...

The Pliocene-Recent is associated with many important climatic and paleoceanographic changes, which have shaped the biotic and abiotic nature of the modern world. The closure of the Central American Seaway and the development and intensification of Northern Hemisphere ice sheets had profound global impacts on the latitudinal and vertical structure...

The geographic ranges of marine organisms, including planktonic foraminifera¹, diatoms, dinoflagellates², copepods³ and fish⁴, are shifting polewards owing to anthropogenic climate change⁵. However, the extent to which species will move and whether these poleward range shifts represent precursor signals that lead to extinction is unclear⁶. Understa...

In palaeontological studies, groups with consistent ecological and morphological traits across a clade’s history (functional groups)¹ afford different perspectives on biodiversity dynamics than do species and genera2,3, which are evolutionarily ephemeral. Here we analyse Triton, a global dataset of Cenozoic macroperforate planktonic foraminiferal o...

Recent studies highlight asymmetrical range shifts within plankton due to spatial variability in climate change, impacting marine ecosystem functioning and biogeochemical cycling. The Pliocene—early Pleistocene interval, characterized by significant climatic fluctuations, provides a framework to study regional responses of marine organisms, such as...

Subduction trenches receive sediment from sediment gravity flows sourced from transverse pathways and trench parallel axial transport pathways. Understanding the interplay between axial and transverse sediment transport in shaping stratigraphic architectures is hindered by the episodic nature of sedimentary gravity flows and limited datasets, yet s...

Polar regions modulate the global climate system across human and geological timescales. A new deep-sea study highlights how the Southern Ocean became the distinctive ecoregion it is today.

The microfossil record contains abundant, diverse, and well‐preserved fossils spanning multiple trophic levels from primary producers to apex predators. In addition, microfossils often constitute and are preserved in high abundances alongside continuous high‐resolution geochemical proxy records. These characteristics mean that microfossils can prov...

Large databases consolidating international deep-sea drilling data have increased our capacity to analyze trends over long timescales and at global spatial resolution. These inferences can be subject to biases beyond those affecting the analysis of individual sites or events.

Caldera-forming eruptions of silicic volcanic systems are among the most devastating events on Earth. By contrast, post-collapse volcanic activity initiating new caldera cycles is generally considered less hazardous. Formed after Santorini’s latest caldera-forming eruption of ~1600 bce, the Kameni Volcano in the southern Aegean Sea enables the erup...

Large explosive volcanic eruptions from island arcs pour pyroclastic currents into marine basins, impacting ecosystems and generating tsunamis that threaten coastal communities and infrastructures. Risk assessments require robust records of such highly hazardous events, which is challenging as most of the products lie buried under the sea. Here we...

Microbes, which make up most of the Earth’s biomass, can survive in some of the most extreme conditions on the planet; they thrive in extreme hot niches at 122 °C, in frozen sea water at −20 °C, in salt solutions, and in acidic (pH=0) and alkaline environments (pH=12.8). Microorganisms have been even discovered several kilometers below the surface...

The Plio-Pleistocene is associated with many important climatic and paleoceanographic changes which have shaped the biotic and abiotic nature of the modern world. The closure of the Central American Seaway and the development and intensification of northern hemisphere icesheets had profound global impacts on the latitudinal and vertical structure o...

Sedimentological and rock magnetic analysis was performed on 67 turbidite samples recovered from Lithostratigraphic units I-III at IODP Site U1520 with the aim to characterise the sedimentary processes and post-depositional diagenesis within a Quaternary sequence in the Hikurangi Trough, New Zealand. Lithostratigraphic Unit I was rapidly emplaced w...

Glacio-eustatic cycles lead to changes in sedimentation on all types of continental margins. There is, however, a paucity of sedimentation rate data over eustatic sea-level cycles in active subduction zones. During International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 375, coring of the upper ∼110 m of the northern Hikurangi Trough Site U1520 recovered...

New biostratigraphically constrained chronologies have been developed to help elucidate the sedimentary and tectonic history of Quaternary sequences on the Hikurangi margin of north-eastern Zealandia. Three sites on the mid to lower slope of the accretionary prism (IODP Site 372-U1517, 375-U1519, 375-U1518) and two sites east of the deformation fro...

Zealandia has very few biostratigraphic markers to help elucidate the often complex and discontinuously cored stratigraphy of Quaternary sequences on the margins and submarine plateaux of the subcontinent. In this study, a detailed biostratigraphic framework has been developed to help unravel the complex stratigraphy of tectonically deformed Quater...

The Earth is currently experiencing rates of environmental change unprecedented in the last 66 million years. As climate change accelerates, the need to quantify biotic responses associated with heightened extinction risk is becoming more urgent. The fossil record can provide a rich source of information about biotic responses to past environmental...

Extinction rates in the modern world are currently at their highest in 66 million years and are likely to increase with projections of future climate change. Our knowledge of modern-day extinction risk is largely limited to decadal-centennial terrestrial records, while data from the marine realm is typically applied to high-order (> 1 million year)...

Slow slip events (SSEs) accommodate a significant proportion of tectonic plate motion at subduction zones, yet little is known about the faults that actually host them. The shallow depth (<2 km) of well-documented SSEs at the Hikurangi subduction zone offshore New Zealand offers a unique opportunity to link geophysical imaging of the subduction zon...

Planktonic foraminifera are widely used in biostratigraphic, palaeoceanographic and evolutionary studies, but the strength of many study conclusions could be weakened if taxonomic identifications are not reproducible by different workers. In this study, to assess the relative importance of a range of possible reasons for among-worker disagreement i...

Slow slip events (SSEs) at the northern Hikurangi subduction margin, New Zealand, are among the best-documented shallow SSEs on Earth. International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 375 was undertaken to investigate the processes and in situ conditions that underlie subduction zone SSEs at the northern Hikurangi Trough by (1) coring at four sites...

Slow slip events (SSEs) are common phenomena in subduction zones and are observed as transient aseismic slip on a fault for weeks to months and are faster than plate convergence rate and slower than the slip rate for regular earthquakes. SSEs at the northern Hikurangi subduction zone are the best-documented ones in the world. Recent geophysical stu...