Nicholas O'Mara, Ph.D.
Organic and Stable Isotope Geochemist
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Princeton University
Paleoclimatology | Paleoecology | Paleofires
Organic and Stable Isotope Geochemist
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Princeton University
Paleoclimatology | Paleoecology | Paleofires
About
My research is centered on understanding how changes in climate and human activities impact ecosystem compositions, distributions, and fire regimes on timescales of decades to millions of years. I apply and develop interpretive frameworks for molecular and isotopic geochemical paleo-proxy methods to a variety of sedimentary archives to reconstruct past environments with a particular focus on rainfall/vegetation/fire interactions within savanna systems. To further investigate the controls and ecological impacts of past fire regimes, I additionally compile and develop novel methods to statistically synthesize multiple individual paleofire records to assess changes in fire regimes across broad spatial scales.
I'm currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University. Previously, I was a G.E. Hutchinson Postdoctoral Fellow at the Yale School of the Environment and the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies. I earned my Ph.D. in paleoclimatology at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, after obtaining a B.S. in Geology–Chemistry from Brown University.
Reconstructing the strength and identifying the drivers of the West African monsoon across Plio-Pleistocene climate transitions, glacial cycles, orbital configurations.
Developing molecular fire-biomarker proxies and data synthesis methods to track how fire regimes in African savannas have changed through time.
Tracking shifts between forest, savanna, and desert using terrestrial plant biomarkers — and linking ecological transitions to climate, fire, and human activity.
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