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Debra A. Willard


Deb received her Ph.D. (dissertation, 1990) and M.S. (thesis, 1985) in botany from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She spent one year at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History as a postdoctoral fellow analyzing phylogenetic relationships among Carboniferous lycopsids and integrating palynological work with megafossil and sedimentological analyses to evaluate the long-term response of terrestrial ecosystems to paleoenvironmental changes during the Paleozoic. In 1991, Dr. Willard came to USGS as part of the Pliocene Research, Interpretation, and Synoptic Mapping (PRISM) project to determine patterns of vegetational response to Plio-Pleistocene climatic changes in the North Atlantic region. She now is investigating ecosystem responses to both anthropogenic and climatic changes in coastal regions of the eastern United States, including the Everglades of south Florida, Gulf Coast tidal wetlands, Lake Pontchartrain, and Chesapeake Bay.


Current Projects

Significant Products

Publications

Work in Progress

Grantz, Arthur, Willard, D.A., and Clark, D.L., in preparation
Position of Devonian to early Mississippian beds in the stratigraphy of Lomonosov Ridge near the North Pole, based on a piston core and the Polarstern seismic data. Polarforschung.
Cronin, T.M., Willard, D.A., Dowsett, H.J., Ishman, S.E., and Liddicoat, J.C., in press
The Pliocene marine and terrestrial paleoclimate and sea level record of the Yorktown Formation, southeastern Virginia. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin. (69 Manuscript pages, Branch approval 12 December 1994).
Edwards, L.E., and Willard, D.A., in press
Dinoflagellate cysts and pollen from sediment samples, Mississippi Sound and Gulf of Mexico. in Gohn, G.S., ed., Stratigraphic framework of the Neogene and Quaternary sediments of the Mississippi coastal zone, Jackson County, Mississippi, U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin.
Willard, D.A., and Edwards, L.E., in press
Palynomorph biostratigraphy and paleoecology of subsurface upper Neogene and Quaternary sediments in southern Jackson County, Mississippi, in Gohn, G.S., ed., Stratigraphic framework of the Neogene and Quaternary sediments of the Mississippi coastal zone, Jackson County, Mississippi, U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin.
Willard, D.A., Holmes, C.W., Murray, J.B., Orem, W.H., and Weimer, L.M., submitted
The Florida Everglades Ecosystem: Millennial and Decadal Scale Changes Through Time. Science.
Weimer, L.M., Willard, D.A., Cooper, S.R., and Jensen, Jennifer., in preparation
Pollen Atlas of taxa present in Water Conservation Area 2A, southern Florida.
Willard, D.A., Cronin, T.M., Flocks, James, Ishman, S.E., Kindinger, Jack, and Waibel, Neil, in preparation
Holocene biotic patterns in Lake Pontchartrain: proxy records of vegetation, eutrophication, and hypoxia.

To Contact

U.S. Geological Survey
926A National Center
Reston, VA 20192
FAX: (703) 648-6953
E-mail: dwillard@usgs.gov

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