To that end, a team of researchers is currently analyzing lake sediment data from more than a thousand sites across the Northeastern United States, with plans to expand to the entire planet. And they’re sampling more than just lake sediments. The pollen counts are part of a larger synthesis—the Paleon Project—a data-fueled attempt to understand our planet’s future, by first understanding its past. It’s a timely effort, coincident with the advent of radical planetary change. Predictions about Earth’s climate have never been so consequential. The Paleon team hopes to ground them in a deeper understanding of nature.

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The Paleon Project was launched in 2011 by a small team of scientists, led by Jason McLachlan, an associate professor of paleoecology at Notre Dame. McLachlan told me there are now more than 100 collaborators on the team, including tree ring specialists, fire ecologists, hydrologists, statisticians, and computer modeling experts. “I’m gregarious, so as soon as I meet someone and they show interest, I rope them in,” McLachlan said.

When scientists predict the future of Earth’s climate, they rely on rich data sources. One of the richest is a global network of “flux towers.” Twice as tall as the most imposing coastal redwoods, but with none of the aesthetic appeal, the largest of these flux towers look like they were built with erector sets. Each has scores of sensors positioned at different heights, in order to sample the surrounding air for radiation, dust, carbon dioxide and water vapor. They measure everything from temperature to atmospheric chemistry to snow depth, and they do it often. Many of these readings are taken several times per second.

Flux towers have given climate scientists a sophisticated understanding of global climate dynamics. “They’re amazing,” McLachlan told me. “They can tell you how a passing cloud affects photosynthesis.”

A flux tower (NSF)

But data from flux towers only goes back 30 years, which is worrying if you’re in the business of making far-seeing climate models, like those used to inform the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, or projections about the climate of the year 2100. McLachlan told me he wants to “pull those models slowly back into the past,” so that they “have the wisdom of the aggregated data” from more ancient sources.

McLachlan’s team is starting with the Northeastern United States, where there’s a long history of collecting paleoecological data, and where there are quite a few lakes. “A lake is like a little garbage bin that catches all the things that are flying around the air,” he told me. That includes pollen from trees, but also charcoal from forest fires. The more charcoal in a lake sediment layer, the more frequent the forest fires in that time slice, and the more likely that local trees were stricken by drought.