John (Jack) Williams is a professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and affiliate with the Center for Climatic Research. His research focuses on the responses of plant species and communities to past and future climate change. Research themes include novel climates, novel ecosystems, and the communities and climates of the last deglaciation as a model system for understanding 21st-century climate change. Awards include the Cooper Award from the Ecological Society of America, the Phil Certain Distinguished Faculty Award and a Romnes Faculty Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin, an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellowship from the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, and Fellowship from Durham University’s Institute for Advanced Study.
CV: Williams_FullCV
Representative publications:
Williams, J. W. & Jackson, S. T. 2007. Novel climates, no-analog communities, and ecological surprises. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 5, 475-482.
Williams, J. W., Shuman, B. & Bartlein, P. J. 2009. Rapid responses of the Midwestern prairie-forest ecotone to early Holocene aridity. Global and Planetary Change 66, 195-207.
Williams, J. W., Shuman, B., Bartlein, P. J., Diffenbaugh, N. S. & Webb, T., III. 2010. Rapid, time-transgressive, and variable responses to early-Holocene midcontinental drying in North America. Geology 38, 135-138.
Williams, J. W., Blois, J. L. & Shuman, B. N. 2011. Extrinsic and intrinsic forcing of abrupt ecological change: Case studies from the late Quaternary. J. Ecol. 99, 664-677.
Ordonez, A. & Williams, J. W. 2013. Climatic and biotic velocities for woody taxa distributions over the last 16 000 years in eastern North America. Ecology Letters 16, 773-781, doi:10.1111/ele.12110.
Wang, Y. et al. 2015. Pronounced variations in Fagus grandifolia abundances in the Great Lakes region during the Holocene. The Holocene DOI: 10.1177/0959683615612586 doi:DOI: 10.1177/0959683615612586.
Ordonez, A., Williams, J. W. & Svenning, J. C. 2016. Climatic novelty, displacement, and divergence: implications for the emergence of novel communities. Nature Climate Change 10.1038/nclimate3127, doi:10.1038/nclimate3127.
Nogues-Bravo, D. et al. Late-Quaternary records forecast amplified plant turnover to climate change. Nature Climate Change 6, 1115-1119 (2016).
Williams, J. W. & Burke, K. (in press) Past abrupt changes in climate and terrestrial ecosystems. in Climate Change and Biodiversity. eds T. Lovejoy & L. Hannah.
Contact:
website: www.geography.wisc.edu/faculty/williams/lab/
email: jwwilliams1-AT-wisc.edu
twitter: @IceAgeEcologist
office: 550 North Park St