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Robert K. Poirier, Ph.D.

I am a Paleoclimate and Paleoceanographic researcher with a primary focus on reconstructing sea-level from past time periods particularly relevant to modern and future sea-level rise predictions. Such reconstructions are accomplished by applying a variety of methods, including various forms of geochronology, micropaleontology, and sedimentology.

Robert Poirier is a Research Geologist at the Florence Bascom Geoscience Center of the U.S. Geological Survey. He received a Batchelor of Science degree from the College of William & Mary, a Master of Science degree from the University of Delaware, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Robert was a USGS Pathways intern from 2010 to 2017, and rejoined USGS in 2020 after spending two years as a post-doctoral researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. Since rejoining USGS, Robert has primarily focused on reconstructing sea level from the Quaternary period, spanning approximately the last 2.5 million years. Specifically, he has sought to identify periods during which sea level was higher than present along the Atlantic Coast. These include periods in which global sea level was both higher and lower than today. The aim of the project is ultimately to: 1) help elucidate what processes presently contribute to elevated rates of sea-level rise throughout the Mid-Atlantic region; 2) determine how those processes have changed (or not) over the past 2.5 million years; and 3) what this new information can tell us about how sea-level rise will continue to change our coastlines decades, centuries, and millennia into the future. Robert’s current project titled “Sea-Level Hotspots of the U.S. Atlantic Coast” is funded through the U.S. Geological Survey’s Land Change Science Program within the Ecosystems Mission Area.

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