Jacquelyn Gill is an Assistant Professor of Paleoecology and Plant Ecology at the University of Maine. As a paleoecologist and biogeographer, she is interested in using the natural experiments of the past to inform conservation in the Anthropocene. Jacquelyn applies an interdisciplinary approach combining paleoenvironmental reconstructions from lake sediments, modern field ecology, and modeling. Research in the Gill Lab focuses on climate change, extinction, and biotic interactions through time, from species to communities to ecosystems.

As a scientist, her goal is to help other ecologists, conservationists, and policy makers better understand how ecosystems have responded to past change, in order to make informed decisions about present and future landscapes.

About the series: In this series, members of the UMaine community will speak about their experience of reading, their awakening as readers, their past and current best books (and maybe even their worst reads). They’ll venture far outside their scholarly fields and bring us into the world of their personal reading.