This travel grant will allow a potential applicant to the Polar Postdoctoral Fellowship Program to visit the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, to discuss a postdoctoral project with Dr. Matthew Wooller, director of the Alaska Stable Isotope Facility, a state-of-the-art laboratory affiliated with the School for Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, and the Department of Geology and Geophysics. The objective will be to better define a potential fellowship project, to effectively organize a research plan with Dr. Wooller as the sponsoring scientist for a possible postdoctoral appointment, to meet with affiliated students and researchers at UAF, and potentially to give a public talk on the applicant's doctoral research. The research would be an investigation in how changes in the paleoecology of Beringian megafauna during the late Pleistocene are correlated with events in the extensive paleoclimate and paleovegetation records for this region. The aim of this project is to understand the dynamics of how the Beringian ecosystem as a whole responded to rapid climate change associated with the Last Glacial Maximum and subsequent post-glacial warming. Given future estimates of intensified warming at high latitudes, this research would provide relevant information about the responses of modern arctic and sub-arctic ecosystems
