International A Level Biology / Environment and climate change

Evidence for climate change: pollen in peat bogs and dendrochronology

Edexcel International A Level Biology (YBI11), chapter 16: Environment and climate change, specification point 5.16. Part of the full course.

Read the revision notes · International A Level Biology past papers

Pollen preserved in peat and tree rings provide evidence about past climates, from before reliable thermometer records. They differ in how precisely they can be dated and what they reveal about growing conditions.

More lessons in Environment and climate change

• Energy transfer between trophic levels
• Gross and net primary productivity
• The carbon cycle
• Using the carbon cycle to reduce atmospheric CO₂
• The greenhouse effect and anthropogenic climate change
• Evidence for climate change: CO2 and temperature records
• The climate debate: correlation, causation and who concludes
• Extrapolating data: climate models and their limitations
• How climate change affects plants and animals
• Temperature, enzymes and Q10
• Core practical 12: temperature and the development of organisms
• Evolution: a change in allele frequency
• Allopatric and sympatric speciation