Giant pile of bat poop helping to predict climate change
Digital Reporter
Thursday, October 26, 2017, 7:07 PM - Researchers always searching for new ways to study the climate, and it looks like they've found a reliable new resource.
Bat droppings.
That's right: A new study published this week examined by researchers at the University of South Florida has determined that bat poop is an accurate measure of how our climate has been changing.
Researchers found a pile of droppings that measured three metres high and had been accumulating for more than a thousand years in a Romanian cave.
Analyzing the nitrogen content in different parts of the pile helped researchers piece together an almost complete annual record of winter precipitation for the area, dating back to about 850 AD.
"Nitrogen cycling within temperate forests is very sensitive to changes in the amount of winter precipitation received each year," reads a statement by the university.
"When nitrogen isotopes change in response to variation in winter precipitation over the past 2,000 years, this signature is transferred from the soil to plant leaves to insect to bat and ultimately guano [which is another, perhaps more polite, word for 'poop']."
The complete study can be found in Scientific Reports.
