Ecosystem resilience and recovery from the Permo-Triassic crisis

It is hard not to have a fascination for the Permo-Triassic mass extinction (PTME). No other catastrophe in history of the world was so far-reaching and all encompassing. Even the death of the dinosaurs does not look quite as bad when compared with the PTME because, even though these terrestrial giants were wiped out, lots of other things survived, especially at the bottom of the ocean. In contrast, no environment, no habitat and no location was safe at the end of the Permian. Death struck in the deepest oceans, in the shallowest waters, and from the equator to the pole. Understanding what happened during the PTME, ~250 myrs ago, and how life recovered is the subject of a new NERC-funded research programme. Called Eco-PT, it is a major collaboration between British and Chinese scientists.
The finger of blame for the PTME points to a giant volcanic region in Siberia. These erupted at the time of the extinction and belched out huge volumes of damaging gases. This included carbon dioxide which is thought to have caused dramatic greenhouse warming and lead to dangerously hot, oxygen-poor and acidified oceans - all bad consequences for marine life. What isn't understood is why conditions got so bad - there have been other giant volcanic eruptions that have not done anywhere near so much harm.
The project will look at the extinctions on land and in the sea to examine when and how these two very different ecosystems collapsed. Did everything die at once or did the extinction on land precede that in the oceans or vice versa? China has the best rocks in the world for such a study and intense collecting of fossils will help answer these questions. Precise controls on the age will be achieved using new, ultra-high precision age dating involving uranium decay in volcanic minerals. It is also possible that there was feedback between the terrestrial and marine extinctions, for example plant dieback on land may have changed nutrient input into the oceans and so altered plankton populations that normal food webs were no longer sustainable.
The potential causes will be investigated using the latest techniques. Thus, a new technique, involving analysis of molecules in fossil pollen will be used to asses the role of ozone loss. Other volcanic gases, such a sulphur dioxide may also have been involved in the terrestrial extinction and this role can now be investigated by examining trace concentration of sulphur compounds and their isotopes preserved in terrestrial rocks that formed at this time in China.
State-of-the-art modelling approaches will also be used to better understand regional and global climate changes during and after the mass extinction and to reconstruct the style of ecosystem recovery. Climate modelling of different scenarios will enable these conditions to be better understand and will help us understand the nature of super-greenhouse worlds with greater clarity.
The prolonged recovery from the PTME is also one of the most fascinating intervals of the world's history. Some groups bounce back quickly whereas others remained in the doldrums for millions of years. The recovery style varied greatly; some groups show an increase in diversity but not their disparity whereas others show an increase of both. What this meant for ecosystem stability and its resilience (ability to cope with further stresses) will be investigated using ecosystem modelling approaches that look at interaction between species and the interplay between form and function in terrestrial animals.

The public and younger learners have long had an intense fascination in the topics of mass extinctions and giant volcanism, as witnessed by the constant media interest in the research results of those engaged in the field. We thus anticipate intense public interest in our research and plan a series of approaches to achieving this impact. Specific public-friendly, research-related materials will be developed, written at New Scientist/Wikipedia level and presented in a dedicated EcoPT website cross-linked with other institutions such as Bristol's Permo-Triassic mass extinction site. Our site will include activities and pages about extinction, recovery, biodiversity, Earth system models and contain media-friendly, newsworthy stories of our research outputs as they become available. Evidence of our skills in this field comes from continuing work in Bristol by the Palaeobiology Research Group (http://bristoldinosaur.com/, http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/research.html http://www.earth4567.com/), and the Lapworth Geological Museum at Birmingham University (http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/facilities/lapworth-museum/about/object-archive.aspx).
We have also experience (e.g. Dunhill) of promoting resources for schools, which we will apply to this project. Thus, we will run a series workshops and provide teaching materials for school teachers, in partnership with STEMNet (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Network), with a particular focus on mass extinction, resilience and earth-system science themes. We will also directly engage with the public through science fairs in both China and the UK. Thus, we will prepare a high-quality portable exhibit that will be combined with table exhibits for manned displays at venues such as the Edinburgh International Science Festival staffed by project investigators and PDRAs. Individually, investigators will also provide talks to regional scientific societies (e.g. Café Scientifique): the team contains some of the most active contributors to such societies (e.g. Wignall, Benton) who have given 100s of such presentations.
Having prepared the educational materials, we will work with experts in public engagement within the host institutions (e.g. Kathy Sykes, Professor of Sciences and Society at Bristol; Alice Roberts; Professor of Public Engagement in Science at Birmingham) and existing support services (e.g. University of Bristol Centre for Public Engagement; University of Birmingham's Think: Public Engagement) who have extensive experience of organising public discussions and high-impact engagement events, and will continue to pursue such impact approaches.