• Linking landscapes and climate to the history and politics of the First Energy Transition
• Co-evolution of large rivers and the global monsoon
• Mega-lakes as essential climate archives and drivers of biogeographic change
• Global CO2 and total chemical weathering fluxes
• Multi-method sediment provenance and source-to-sink budgets
Dr Tara Jonell is sedimentary geologist who investigates climate change across timescales. To unravel when, how, and why climate change mediates erosion and environmental change, she combines the petrographic, geochronological, and geochemical datasets yielded from rivers and lakes with field and satellite measurements of topography. Most recently, Dr Jonell works to bridge gaps among geological and modern observations with evidence held in historical maps and archives.
Dr Jonell joined the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences at the University of Glasgow in August 2021 as a Research Associate, collaborating on the 2021–2025 Leverhulme Trust project “Away from the Water: The First Energy Transition, British Textiles 1770–1890” with Drs. Paul Bishop and Peter Jones (GES), Dr. Adam Lucas (University of Wollongong), and The National Library of Scotland.
She received her PhD in Geology from Louisiana State University after obtaining a MSc in Geology from New Mexico State University and BSc (with Honours) in Geology from Kent State University. Dr Jonell was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and Senior Instructor for the Louisiana State University Charles Barney Geology Field Camp before joining the University of Queensland as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2018–2021) in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences.
2021-Present:
• Away from the Water: The First Energy Transition, British Textiles 1770–1890, Leverhulme Trust, as Research Associate: https://www.leverhulme.ac.uk/research-project-grants-2020
• Landscape dynamics of Cape York Peninsula, as Partner Investigator (pilot study active, for Australian Research Council)
2019-Present:
• Late Neogene tectonic and climate evolution of the Ayeyarwady Basin (hiatus after 3/2022 due to covid-19 restrictions)
• Using mega-lakes to amplify links between climate and biogeography (postponed 2020-present due to covid-19 restrictions)
Jonell, T.N., Giosan, L., Clift, P.D., Carter, A., Hathorne, E., Bretschneider, L., Barbarano, M. Garzanti, E., Vezzoli, G., and Naing, T., 2022, No modern Irrawaddy River until the late Miocene-Pliocene: Earth and Planetary Science Letters
Andjić, G., Zhou, R., Jonell, T.N., and Aitchison, J.C., 2022, A single Dras-Kohistan-Ladakh arc revealed by volcaniclastic records, Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 23, e2021GC010042. doi: 10.1029/2021GC010042
Ao, H., Liebrand, D., Dekkers, M.J., Zhang, P., Song, Y., Liu, Q., Jonell, T.N., Sun, Q., Li, X., Li, X., Qiang, X. and An, Z., 2021, Eccentricity-paced monsoon variability on the northeastern Tibetan Plateau in the late Oligocene high CO2 world: Science Advances 7 (15), doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abk2318
Clift, P.D., and Jonell, T.N., 2021, Monsoon controls on sediment generation and transport: Mass budget and provenance constraints from the Indus River catchment, delta and submarine fan over tectonic and multi-millennial timescales: Earth Science-Reviews, 220, doi: 10.1016/j.earscirev.2021.103682
Clift, P.D., and Jonell, T.N., 2021, Himalayan-Tibetan erosion is not the cause of Neogene global cooling: Geophysical Research Letters, doi: 10.1029/2020GL087742
