New KU laboratory to help researchers understand the response of life to Earth's changing environment

Behind Nichols Hall stands the bronze sculpture Icarus, created in 1965 by Charles Umlauf, a prolific and internationally known sculptor.

A new laboratory under construction at the University of Kansas will help researchers use the geologic record of the past to predict how life on Earth will respond to environmental changes in the future.

The W. M. Keck Foundation Paleoenvironmental and Environmental Stable Isotope Laboratory is under construction in Nichols Hall on West campus. Under the direction of Professor Luis González of the Department of Geology, the laboratory will bring together researchers from the departments of ecology and evolutionary biology, geology and geography with those from the Kansas Biological Survey and the Kansas Geological Survey. The scientists will pursue interdisciplinary work in an effort to predict the response of life on Earth to long-term environmental change. The research will include exploration of biodiversity, global warming, human-induced change and natural change.

“By understanding climatic changes and how they have affected the environment in the past, we may be able to predict how life on Earth will be affected by future changes, such as changes in atmospheric composition or temperature,” said Robert H. Goldstein, distinguished professor and chair of geology. “This facility will help us look at the processes controlling environmental change and understand interactions between the environment and life on earth.”

The laboratory and its equipment were funded through a recent grant of $450,000 to the Kansas University Endowment Association from the W. M. Keck Foundation of Los Angeles, Calif. Additional funding for the $1.2 million laboratory was provided through the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the KU Center for Research and a National Science Foundation grant to González.

“The support from the Keck Foundation was vital in establishing this laboratory,” Goldstein said. “Their grant will make the laboratory one of the finest facilities in the United States for stable isotopic analysis.”

When the laboratory is completed in spring 2005, scientists will use equipment such as a mass spectrometer to analyze geological samples in order to reconstruct the Earth’s response to change.

For example, Goldstein said, researchers can look at the isotopes of carbon from the shell of an ancient organism to determine the composition of the atmosphere millions of years ago.

“Methane contains carbon,” he said. “There are times in geologic history when there have been large methane gas events that have bubbled off into the atmosphere, altering the climate. So if we can look at organisms that formed in the presence of that atmosphere we can get a record of the atmosphere’s composition at the time.”

Goldstein said that factors such as past atmospheric composition and temperature are important in understanding major events, such as mass extinctions.

“We can expect that such events will repeat themselves in the future, because the geologic record is littered with many such events,” he said. “How did increases in carbon dioxide or methane in our atmosphere affect Earth’s inhabitants of the past, for example? This laboratory will help researchers work together to explore these kinds of questions.”

The facility will allow scientists to conduct research at KU instead of sending geologic samples to be evaluated at other facilities out of state. In the past, the distance to other testing laboratories made it difficult for scientists from several fields to work together on the same question, and fragile samples sometimes were destroyed in transit.

The W.M. Keck Foundation focuses on making grants in five areas: science and engineering research; undergraduate science and engineering; medical research; liberal arts; and Southern California. Established in 1954 by William Myron Keck, founder of The Superior Oil Company, the foundation is one of the nation’s largest philanthropic organizations and has assets of more than $1 billion.

The gift from the Keck Foundation counted toward the goal of KU First: Invest in Excellence, the largest fund-raising campaign in KU history. KU Endowment conducted KU First on behalf of KU through 2004 to raise in excess of $600 million for scholarships, fellowships, professorships, capital projects and program support. KU Endowment serves as the independent, non-profit fund-raising and fund-management organization for KU.