Expertise: I am associated with two universities where I both teach and conduct collaborative research. During the late 1980s and 1990s I was an associate research professor at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada, where much of my research was directed toward reconstruction of frequencies and magnitudes of wetter climate episodes that might have impacted the area where the Yucca Mtn high-level nuclear waste facility was planned. My current research is focused on the reconstruction of past vegetation communities and the climates that affected them. Using paleobotanical and geomorphological expertises, I am directing my attention toward short term late Quaternary climatic change in the Great Basin, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East, and its effect on landscape dynamics, and people both past, present, and future. I am currently conducting research in southern Italy, and in the Middle East. In southern Italy poor agricultural practices, and increasing torrential type rains due to global change, is continuing to strip topsoil in the Puglia and Basilicata region in southern Italy. I am examining the impact upon geomorphic processes of fluctuating sea levels during the late Quaternary in the region. This ties into previous research that I conduced in the Ballona Estuary in the southwestern Los Angeles Basin where I reconstructed marsh history as it related to sea level change, climate fluctuations and changes in coastal geomorphology due to infilling of coastal bays, and changes in stream patterns due to seismic events. My publications are at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Peter_Wigand.