Member Profile
Richard Norris
Cal-Echoes Research & Outreach Cruise
IGERT Trainees Ben Fissel, Summer Martin, Nuri “Tessa” Pierce, and PI Dick Norris participated in a nine-day research cruise aboard the R/V Melville (September 25 – October 3, 2010). The Cal-Echoes... More »
About Me
I work on climate and evolution in the oceans on a variety of time scales. For example, I am interested in recent human impacts on marine ecosystems and the biological and physical processes that structure biodiversity of modern plankton. I am also involved in forecasting how the ecosystems that sustain us are likely to change in the near future and assessing where the “tipping points” lie in the environment.
Part of my research involves studies of genetic biogeography of marine organisms and linking this with the historical record of organisms, climate, and ecosystems preserved in marine sediments. I also work on biological evolution during periods of past warm climates and the ecological consequences of “extreme climate” events like the mass extinction that bumped off the dinosaurs. A good deal of my work has been associated with the Ocean Drilling Program—an international study of the evolution of the deep sea. A growing focus of my lab is examining past analogs to future global change ranging from examples of past ocean acidification events to the dynamics of extinction. These studies involve collaborations with climate modelers, geochemists and biologists. Currently, I lead a National Research Council Study on the lessons that past climate change has for understanding likely global change in the next 100 years.
I was an undergraduate in Earth Sciences at UC Santa Cruz, obtained a Master’s of Science degree at University of Arizona, Tucson, and a Ph.D. at Harvard University in geology. I have also worked on the Condor Recovery Project for the State of California and served as director of the NRS Granite Mountain Reserve for the University of California. I am very interested in the history of both marine and terrestrial ecosystems and have an abiding love for Natural History, backpacking, botanizing, fishing for lizards in the desert and singing around the campfire.
