Ramya Bala PrabhakaranUniversity of Pennsylvania | UP · Department of Anthropology
Ramya Bala Prabhakaran
Doctor of Philosophy
About
11
Publications
2,725
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12
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
I work on 'Human-Biosphere-Climate interactions' in southern Indian dry tropical forests, reconstructing Holocene paleoenvironments using stable isotopes, pollen, phytolith & charcoal from wetlands of the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. Before that, I worked on 'Multi-disciplinary characterization of cryoconites in Pyrenean glaciers' at EcoLab, Toulouse, France on the geochemistry of inorganic pollutants for source characterization and discovering microbial diversity in extreme micro-ecosystems.
Additional affiliations
August 2021 - present
March 2021 - May 2021
March 2019 - March 2020
Education
August 2009 - December 2015
July 2005 - April 2009
Publications
Publications (11)
Peat deposits (>50 ka) in the montane Nilgiris (Western Ghats, India), have been central to the reconstruction of late Quaternary paleoclimate using paleovegetation changes in the forest-grassland vegetation mosaic that coexist here. However, it is well-known that short-term disturbances can also cause vegetation switches when multiple stable veget...
agu2021fallmeeting-agu.ipostersessions.com/Default.aspx?s=1A-10-13-B6-41-D3-87-77-75-51-FE-B8-1B-BF-78-F0
Human migration in response to past climate change has been recorded globally. The pastoralist Todas are believed to have colonised the higher elevations (>2000 m asl) of the Nilgiris, Western Ghats, India, after ∼2000 cal. yr BP. During the late Quaternary, climate-induced vegetation shifts in tropical montane forest-grassland mosaic of the Nilgir...
Mineral dust, especially from the Middle-East, has been known to affect monsoon circulation in India, a country whose economy is heavily contingent on the timely arrival of the monsoon. Reconstruction of dust circulation in the past and its relationship to the monsoon has never been attempted in India although inorganic geochemical proxies from pea...
Human migration in response to climate change during the Holocene has been recorded in many regions of the world. The Todas are a pastoralist people who are believed to have colonized the higher elevations (>2000 m asl) of the Nilgiris in the Western Ghats, India, not earlier than about 2000 cal. yr BP. Vegetation shifts in response to changing cli...
The poster explains the objectives of my SERB - overseas post-doctoral fellowship award at EcoLab, Toulouse, France
Radiocarbon (14C) dating remains the predominant method to build robust chronologies from peat deposits for paleoclimate reconstruction. Although it is widely known that the 14C content of different chemical fractions in peat varies, this heterogeneity is not fully accounted for while constructing age-depth models. Since peat is a complex and heter...
Peat from the temperate regions has been used for paleoenvironmental reconstruction using diverse proxies for over a century now. Peat is rare and severely understudied in the tropics. The montane peat bogs of the Nilgiris, southern India have been found to preserve global climatic signals including the Holocene Optimum and the Last Glacial Maximum...
Peat cores have been popular archives for paleoenvironmental reconstruction using diverse proxies for over a century now (Bindler 2006). Unlike other archives, establishing the chronology of climatic proxies in the peat profile is error-prone since it solely relies on radiocarbon ages and very rarely on other opportunistic event horizons. Though th...
Questions
Questions (2)
I am looking for a simple vibracoring equipment for sampling wetlands, any leads from my friends and colleagues in India will be appreciated, thank you. Would be happy to import too.
I have a very nicely done graphic that I already published that I would like to reuse in another manuscript I am submitting now. I will of course give acknowledgement to the previous article (reproduced from XYZ et al.) The previous article and the current submission both are published by Elsevier. Do I have the author right?
Projects
Projects (4)
Vegetation shifts in the past of tropical montane forest-grassland ecosystem mosaic in Nilgiris are well documented using stable isotope studies and palynology. In this study, we reconstructed paleofire records to understand the fire-vegetation relationship and also to establish the role of human in altering the stability of the ecosystem mosaic. Peat samples from Sandynallah basin were used to reconstruct fire history based on charcoal records, fungal spores to understand levels of herbivory and lipid biomarkers to understand human interferences.
La Voi Du Pole expedition to cross the Arctic ocean via the pole on a sailing catermeran will take samples in the search for the extent of microplastics in the Arctic. The three month voyage will take the boat 3000km across the ice.
Aim to analyse source and transport of various isotopes in cryoconites
