David A. Gapp, the Silas D. Childs Professor of Biology, attended the International Conference on Volcanoes, Climate and Society: Bicentenary of the great Tambora eruption April 7-10 at the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Bern, Switzerland. The conference recognized the tremendous global climatic impact of the eruption of Mt. Tambora in Indonesia 200 years ago.
Among the many global impacts of the eruption, the “Year without a Summer” (1816) is often cited as a major outcome, especially in the northeastern U.S. and eastern Canada.
Gapp presented a poster titled “Central New York State: Impact of the Year without a Summer” which assessed the effect of the eruption on local food production and availability as documented through records of Hamilton food purchases made during the years 1815-1817.
