Publications

Selected Publications

Journal Articles (^indicates students and other members of lab group)

2025

Fastovich, David, Meyers, S.R., Saupe, E.E., Williams, J.W., Dornelas, M., Dowding, E.M., Finnegan, S., Huang, H.-H.M., Jonkers, L., Kiessling, W., Kocsis, Á.T., Li, Q., Liow, L.H., Na, L., Penny, A.M., Pippenger, K., Renaudie, J., Rillo, M.C., Smith, J., Steinbauer, M.J., Sugawara, M., Tomašovỳch, A., Yasuhara, M., Hull, P.M., 2025. Coupled, decoupled, and abrupt responses of vegetation to climate across timescales. Science 389: 64-68. DOI
Salonen, J.S., Schenk, F., Williams, J.W., Shuman, B.N., Lindroth Dauner, A.L., Wagner, S., Jungclaus, J., Zhang, Q., Luoto, M., 2025. Patterns and drivers of Holocene moisture variability in mid-latitude eastern North America. Nature Communications 16: 3582. DOI
Stemkovski, M., Bernhardt, J.R., Blonder, B.W., Bradford, J.B., Clark-Wolf, K., Dee, L.E., Evans, M.E.K., Iglesias, V., Johnson, L.C., Lynch, A.J., Malone, S.L., Osborne, B.B., Pastore, M.A., Paterson, M., Pinsky, M.L., Rollinson, C.R., Selmoni, O., Venkiteswaran, J.J., Walker, A.P., Ward, N.K., Williams, J.W., Zarakas, C.M., Adler, P.B., 2025. Ecological acclimation: A framework to integrate fast and slow responses to climate change. Functional Ecology n/a. DOI
Staples, T.L., Blois, J., Cramer, K.L., Cunningham, E.T., Dornelas, M., Haberle, S.G., Heger, T., Kiessling, W., Magurran, A.E., O’Dea, A., Penny, A.M., Radeloff, V.C., Smith, J.A., Thuiller, W., Williams, J.W., Pandolfi, J.M., 2025. A conceptual framework for measuring ecological novelty. Global Ecology and Biogeography 34, e70005. DOI

2024

Fastovich, D.^, Radeloff, V. C., Zuckerberg, B. and Williams, J. W., 2024. Legacies of millennial-scale climate oscillations in contemporary biodiversity in eastern North America. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 379: no. 1902. DOI.
Schlenker, Nora^, Jonathan Johnson, Tessa Ray-Cozzens, Vania Stefanova, David M. Nelson, Bryan N. Shuman, and John W. Williams, 2024. Interacting effects of fire and hydroclimate on oak and beech community prevalence in the southern Great Lakes region. Journal of Ecology 112: 1101–22. DOI.
Nelson, J.K., Blois, J., Goring, S., Williams, J.W., Dominguez, S., 2024. User-centered design and evaluation of the Neotoma paleoecology open software ecosystem. International Journal of Digital Earth 17, 2378822. DOI
Herbert, A.V., Haberle, S.G., Flantua, S.G.A., Mottl, O., Blois, J.L., Williams, J.W., George, A., Hope, G., 2024. The Indo-Pacific Pollen Database - a Neotoma constituent database. Climate of the Past 20, 2473–2485. DOI
Anderson, K., Tooth, S., Kim, D., Resler, L. M. Schillereff, D., Williams, J. W., Rocchini, D., Ponette-González, A. G., Kuhn, N. J., and Brian, J. V., 2024. A horizon scan for novel and impactful areas of physical geography research in 2023 and beyond. Progress in Physical Geography: Earth and Environment 48: 3–23. DOI.
Smith, J., Rillo, M.C., Kocsis, Á.T., Dornelas, M., Fastovich, D., Huang, H.-H.M., Jonkers, L., Kiessling, W., Li, Q., Liow, L.H., Margulis-Ohnuma, M., Meyers, S., Na, L., Penny, A.M., Pippenger, K., Renaudie, J., Saupe, E.E., Steinbauer, M.J., Sugawara, M., Tomašovỳch, A., Williams, J.W., Yasuhara, M., Finnegan, S., Hull, P.M., 2024. BioDeepTime: A database of biodiversity time series for modern and fossil assemblages. Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr. 32: 1680-1689 DOI
Shipley, O.N., Dabrowski, A.J., Bowen, G.J., Hayden, B., Pauli, J.N., Jordan, C., Anderson, L., Bailey, A., Bataille, C.P., Cicero, C., Close, H.G., Cook, C., Cook, J.A., Desai, A.R., Evaristo, J., Filley, T.R., France, C.A.M., Jackson, A.L., Kim, S.L., Kopf, S., Loisel, J., Manlick, P.J., McFarlin, J.M., McMeans, B.C., O’Connell, T.C., Pilaar Birch, S.E., Putman, A.L., Semmens, B.X., Stantis, C., Stricker, C.A., Szejner, P., Trammell, T.L.E., Uhen, M.D., Weintraub-Leff, S., Wooller, M.J., Williams, J.W., Yarnes, C.T., Vander Zanden, H.B., Newsome, S.D., 2024. Design, development, and implementation of IsoBank: A centralized repository for isotopic data. PLOS ONE 19, e0295662. DOI
Kaushal, N., J. W. Williams, G. Koren, A. Filippova, and N. G. Goodkin., 2024. Building the big-data ecosystem for paleoclimatology. PAGES Magazine 32: 144–45.

2023

Williams, J.W., Blois, J.L., Capo, E., Goring, S., Heintzman, P.D., Monchamp, M.-E., Parducci, L., Spanbauer, T.L., Von Eggers, J., Alsos, I.G., Bowler, C., Coolen, M.J.L., Crump, S., Epp, L.S., Fernandez-Guerra, A., Grimm, E., Herzschuh, U., Mereghetti, A., Meyer, R., Nota, K., Pedersen, M.W., Perez, V., Shapiro, B., Stoof-Leichsenring, K.R., Wood, J.R., 2023. Strengthening global-change science by integrating aeDNA with paleoecoinformatics. Trends Ecol. Evol. 38: 946-960 DOI
George, A.^, Widell, S.,^ Roth, R.E., Williams, J.W., 2023. Range Mapper: An adaptable process for making and using interactive, animated web maps of late-Quaternary open paleoecological data. Open Quaternary 9, 15. DOI
Williams, J. W., Taylor, A., Tolley, K. A., Provete, D. B., Correia, R., Guedes, T. B., Farooq, H., et al. 2023. Shifts to open access with high article processing charges hinder research equity and careers. Journal of Biogeography 50: 1485–89. DOI.

2022

Fastovich, D.^, Russell, J.M., Marcott, S.A., Williams, J.W., 2022. Spatial fingerprints and mechanisms of precipitation and temperature changes during the Younger Dryas in eastern North America. Quaternary Science Reviews 294: 107724
Perrotti, A.^, Kiahtipes, C.A., Russell, J., Jackson, S.T., Gill, J.L., Robinson, G., Krause, T., Williams, J.W., 2022. Diverse responses of vegetation and fire after Pleistocene megaherbivore declines across the eastern US. Quaternary Science Reviews 294: 107696.
Raiho, A.M., Paciorek, C.J., Dawson, A., Jackson, S.T., Mladenoff, D.J., Williams, J.W., McLachlan, J.S., 2022. 8000-year doubling of Midwestern forest biomass driven by population- and biome-scale processes. Science 376, 1491-1495.
Williams, J.W., Seddon, A.W.R., Huntley, B., 2022. Climate sensitivity and ecoclimate sensitivity: theory, usage, and past implications for 21st century biospheric responses. Current Climate Change Reports. 8: 1-16
Williams, J.W., 2022. Bottom-up versus top-down megafauna-vegetation interactions in ancient Beringia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119, e2121734119.

2021

Williams, J.W., 2021. RAD: A paradigm, shifting. Bioscience 72: 13-15.
Brovkin, V., Brook, E., Williams, J.W., Lenton, T.M., Barton, T., Bathiany, S., DeConto, R.M., Donges, J., Ganopolski, A., McManus, J.F., Praetorius, S.K., de Vernal, A., Abe-Ouchi, A., Cheng, H., Claussen, M., Crucifix, M., Gallopin, G., Iglesias, V., Kaufman, D.S., Kleinen, T., Lambert, F., van der Leeuw, S., Liddy, H., Loutre, M.-F., McGee, D., Rehfeld, K., Rhodes, R., Seddon, A.W.R., Trauth, M.H., Vanderverken, L., Yu, Z., 2021. Past abrupt changes, tipping points and cascading impacts in coupled climate-ecological-social systems: Lessons for the future. Nature Geoscience 14: 550-558.
Mottl, O., Flantua, S.G.A., Bhatta, K.P., Felde, V.A., Giesecke, T., Goring, S., Grimm, E.C., Haberle, S., Hooghiemstra, H., Ivory, S., Kuneš, P., Wolters, S., Seddon, A.W.R., Williams, J.W., 2021. Global acceleration in rates of vegetation change is unprecedented over the last 18,000 years. Science 372: 860-864. 10.1126/science.abg1685
Williams, J.W., Ordonez, A., Svenning, J.-C., 2021. A unifying framework for studying and managing climate-driven rates of ecological change. Nature Ecology & Evolution 5: 17-26.
Jensen, A.M.^, Fastovich, D. , Watson, B.I. *, Gill, J.L., Jackson, S.T., Russell, J.M., Bevington, J. *, Hayes, K., Lininger, K., Rubbelke, C. *, Schellinger, G.C., Williams, J.W., 2021. *More than one way to kill a spruce forest: The role of fire and climate in the late-glacial termination of spruce woodlands across the southern Great Lakes. Journal of Ecology 109: 459-477. DOI
Uhen, M.D., Buckland, P.I., Goring Simon, J., Jenkins, J., Williams, J.W., 2021. The EarthLife Consortium API: An extensible, open-source service for accessing fossil data and taxonomies from multiple community paleodata resources. Frontiers of Biogeography e50711.
Graham, R.W., Almendinger, J., Williams, J.W., Jackson, S.T., Betancourt, J.L., Styles, B., 2021. Memorial to Eric Christopher Grimm 1951-2020. Geological Society of America Memorials 50, 31-35.

2020

Bradshaw, R.H.W., Styles, B., Giesecke, T., Flantua, S.G.A., Bittmann, F., Williams, J.W., 2021. Eric C. Grimm 1951–2020. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 30, 305-312.
Fastovich, D.^, Russell, J.M., Jackson, S.T., Krause, T.R., Marcott, S.A., Williams, J.W., 2020. Spatial fingerprint of Younger Dryas cooling and warming in eastern North America. Geophysical Research Letters DOI
Wang, Y.^, Graham, R.W., Porter, W.P., Wårlind, D., Widga, C., Williams, J.W., 2020. Caught in a bottleneck: habitat loss for woolly mammoth in central North America and the ice-free corridor during the last deglaciation. Global Ecology and Biogeography. DOI
Rollinson, C.R., Dawson, A., Raiho, A.M., Williams, J.W., Dietze, M.C., Hickler, T., Jackson, S.T., McLachlan, J., Moore, D.J.P., Poulter, B., Quaife, T., Steinkamp, J., Trachsel, M., 2020. Forest responses to last-millennium hydroclimate variability are governed by spatial variations in ecosystem sensitivity. Ecology Letters 24: 498-508 DOI
Fastovich, D.^, Russell, J.M., Jackson, S.T., Williams, J.W., 2020. Deglacial temperature controls on no-analog community establishment in the Great Lakes Region. Quaternary Science Reviews 234, 106245.
Trachsel, M.^, Dawson, A., Paciorek, C.J., Cogbill, C.V., Foster, D.R., Goring, S.J., Jackson, S.T., McLachlan, J.S., Oswald, W.W., Shuman, B.N., Williams, J.W., 2020. Comparison of settlement-era vegetation reconstructions for STEPPS and REVEALS pollen-vegetation models in the northeastern United States. Quaternary Research 1-20.
Turner, M.G., Calder, W.J., Cumming, G.S., Hughes, T.P., Jentsch, A., LaDeau, S.L., Lenton, T.M., Shuman, B.N., Turetsky, M.R., Ratajczak, Z., Williams, J. W., Williams, A.P., Carpenter, S.R., 2020. Climate change, ecosystems and abrupt change: science priorities. *Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 375, 20190105.

2019

Khider, D., Emile-Geay, J., McKay, N.P., Gil, Y., Garijo, D., Ratnakar, V., Alonso-Garcia, M., Bertrand, S., Bothe, O., Brewer, P., Bunn, A., Chevalier, M., Comas-Bru, L., Csank, A., Dassié, E., DeLong, K., Felis, T., Francus, P., Frappier, A., Gray, W., Goring, S., Jonkers, L., Kahle, M., Kaufman, D., Kehrwald, N.M., Martrat, B., McGregor, H., Richey, J., Schmittner, A., Scroxton, N., Sutherland, E., Thirumalai, K., Allen, K., Arnaud, F., Axford, Y., Barrows, T., Bazin, L., Pilaar Birch, S.E., Bradley, E., Bregy, J., Capron, E., Cartapanis, O., Chiang, H.W., Cobb, K.M., Debret, M., Dommain, R., Du, J., Dyez, K., Emerick, S., Erb, M.P., Falster, G., Finsinger, W., Fortier, D., Gauthier, N., George, S., Grimm, E., Hertzberg, J., Hibbert, F., Hillman, A., Hobbs, W., Huber, M., Hughes, A.L.C., Jaccard, S., Ruan, J., Kienast, M., Konecky, B., Le Roux, G., Lyubchich, V., Novello, V.F., Olaka, L., Partin, J.W., Pearce, C., Phipps, S.J., Pignol, C., Piotrowska, N., Poli, M.S., Prokopenko, A., Schwanck, F., Stepanek, C., Swann, G.E.A., Telford, R., Thomas, E., Thomas, Z., Truebe, S., von Gunten, L., Waite, A., Weitzel, N., Wilhelm, B., Williams, J., Winstrup, M., Zhao, N., Zhou, Y., 2019. PaCTS 1.0: A Crowdsourced Reporting Standard for Paleoclimate Data. Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology DOI
Salonen, J.S., Korpela, M., Williams, J.W., Luoto, M., 2019. Machine-learning based reconstructions of primary and secondary climate variables from North American and European fossil pollen data. Scientific Reports 9, 15805.
Burke, K.D.^, Williams, J.W., Brewer, S., Finsinger, W., Giesecke, T., Lorenz, D.J., Ordonez, A., 2019. Differing climatic mechanisms control transient and accumulated vegetation novelty in Europe and eastern North America. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 374: 20190218.
Dawson, A., Paciorek, C. J., Goring, Simon, J., Jackson, S. T., McLachlan, J. S., and Williams J. W. (2019) Quantifying trends and uncertainty in prehistoric forest composition in the upper Midwestern United States. Ecology DOI
Williams, J. W., Burke, K.^, Crossley, M., Grant, D.^, and Radeloff, V. C. (2019) Land use and climatic causes of environmental novelty in Wisconsin since 1890. Ecological Applications DOI
Seeley, M.^, Goring, S., and Williams, J. W. (2019) Testing hypotheses about environmental and dispersal controls on Fagus grandifolia distributions in the upper Midwest Great Lakes region. Journal of Biogeography 46: 405-419
Stegner, M. A.^, Ratajczak, Z., Carpenter, S. R., and Williams, J. W. (2019) Inferring critical transitions in long time series with irregular sampling and variable time-averaging. Quaternary Science Reviews 207: 49-63.
Ramiadantsoa, T.^, Stegner, M. A.^, Williams, J. W., and Ives, A. R. (2019) The potential role of intrinsic processes in generating abrupt and quasi-synchronous tree declines during the Holocene. Ecology 100: e02579.
Krause, T. R., Russell, J. M., Zhang, R., Williams, J. W., and Jackson, S. T. (2019) Late-Quaternary vegetation, climate, and fire history of the Southeast Atlantic Coastal Plain based on a 30,000-yr multi-proxy record from White Pond, South Carolina (USA). Quaternary Research. DOI

2018

Wang, Y.^, Porter, W. P., Mathewson, P. D., Miller, P. A., Graham, R., and Williams, J. W. (2018) Mechanistic modeling of environmental drivers of woolly mammoth carrying capacity and extinction on St. Paul Island, AK. Ecology 99: 2721-2730.
Belote, R.T., Carroll, C., Martinuzzi, S., Michalak, J., Williams, J.W., Williamson, M.A., Aplet, G.H., 2018. Assessing agreement among alternative climate change projections to inform conservation recommendations in the contiguous United States. Scientific Reports 8, 9441.
Dawson, A., Cao, X., Chaput, M., Hopla, E., Li, F., Edwards, M., Fyfe, R., Gajewski, K., Goring, S.J., Herzschuh, U., Mazier, F., Sugita, S., Williams, J.W., Xu, Q., Gaillard, M.-J., 2018. Finding the magnitude of human-induced Northern Hemisphere land-cover transformation between 6 and 0.2 ka BP. PAGES Magazine 26, 34-35.
Williams, J. W., Kaufman, D. S., Newton, A., and Von Gunten, L. (2018) Building and harnessing open data. PAGES Magazine 26
Williams, J. W., Kaufman, D. S., Newton, A., and Von Gunten, L. (2018) Building open data: Data stewards and community-curated data resources. PAGES Magazine 26: 50-51.
Burke, K. D.^, Williams, J. W., Chandler, M., Haywood, A. M., Lunt, D. J., and Otto-Bliesner, B. L. (2018) Pliocene and Eocene provide best analogues for near-future climates. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115: 13,288-13,293.
Farley, S. S.^, Dawson, A., Goring, S. J., and Williams, J. W. (2018) Situating ecology as a big data science: Current advances, challenges, and solutions. Bioscience 68: 563-576. DOI
Gonzalez, P., Wang, F.^, Notaro, M., Vimont, D. J., and Williams, J. W. (2018) Disproportionate magnitude of climate change in United States national parks. Environmental Research Letters 13: 104001
Ratajczak, Z., Carpenter, S. R., Ives, A. R., Kucharik, C. J., Ramiadantsoa, T., Stegner, M. A.^, Williams, J. W., Zhang, J., and Turner, M. G. (2018) Abrupt change in ecological systems: inference and diagnosis. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 33: 513-526 DOI
Cogbill, C. V., Thurman, A. L., Williams, J. W., Zhu, J., Mladenoff, D. J., and Goring, S. J. (2018) A retrospective on the accuracy and precision of plotless forest density estimators in ecological studies. Ecosphere 9:e02187.
Pither, J., Pickles, B. J., Simard, S. W., Ordonez, A., and Williams, J. W. (2018) Below-ground biotic interactions moderated the postglacial range dynamics of trees. New Phytologist DOI
Fitzpatrick, M. C., Blois, J. L., Williams, J. W., Nieto-Lugilde, D., Maguire, K. C., and Lorenz, D. J. (2018) How will climate novelty influence ecological forecasts? Using the Quaternary to assess future reliability. Global Change Biology 24: 3575-3586 DOI
Williams, J. W., Grimm, E. G., Blois, J., Charles, D. F., Davis, E., Goring, S. J., Graham, R., Smith, A. J., Anderson, M., Arroyo-Cabrales, J., Ashworth, A. C., Betancourt, J. L., Bills, B. W., Booth, R. K., Buckland, P., Curry, B., Giesecke, T., Hausmann, S., Jackson, S. T., Latorre, C., Nichols, J., Purdum, T., Roth, R. E., Stryker, M., and Takahara, H. (2018) The Neotoma Paleoecology Database: A multi-proxy, international community-curated data resource. Quaternary Research 89: 156-177.
Dawson, A., Cao, X., Chaput, M., Hopla, E., Li, F., Edwards, M., Fyfe, R., Gajewski, K., Goring, S. J., Herzschuh, U., Mazier, F., Sugita, S., Williams, J. W., Xu, Q., and Gaillard, M.-J. (2018) Finding the magnitude of human-induced Northern Hemisphere land-cover transformation between 6 and 0.2 ka BP. PAGES Magazine 26:34-35.
Watson, B. I.^, Williams, J. W., Russell, J. W., Jackson, S. T., Shane, L. C. K., and Lowell, T. V. (2018) Temperature variations in the southern Great Lakes during the last deglaciation: Comparison between pollen and GDGT proxies. Quaternary Science Reviews 182: 78-92
Nieto-Lugilde, D., Maguire, K. C., Blois, J. L., Williams, J. W., and Fitzpatrick, M. C. (2018) Multiresponse algorithms for community-level modelling: Review of theory, applications, and comparison to species distribution models. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 9:834-848.
Wooller, M., Saulnier-Talbot, E., Potter, B., Belmecheri, S., Bigelow, N., Choy, K., Cwynar, L., Davies, K., Graham, R., Kurek, J., Langdon, P., Medeiros, A., Rawcliffe, R., Wang, Y^., & Williams, J. (2018) A new terrestrial palaeoenvironmental record from the Bering Land Bridge and context for human dispersal. Royal Society Open Science, 5(6): 180145.

2017

Goring, S. J.^, and Williams, J. W. (2017) Effect of historic land-use and climate change on tree-climate relationships in the upper Midwestern United States. Ecology Letters 20: 461-470. DOI
Marlon, J. R., Pederson, N., Nolan, C., Goring, S., Shuman, B., Robertson, A., Booth, R., Bartlein, P. J., Berke, M. A., Clifford, M., Cook, E., Dieffenbacher-Krall, A., Dietze, M. C., Hessl, A., Hubeny, J. B., Jackson, S. T., Marsicek, J., McLachlan, J., Mock, C. J., Moore, D. J. P., Nichols, J., Peteet, D., Schaefer, K., Trouet, V., Umbanhowar, C., Williams, J. W., and Yu, Z. (2017) Climatic history of the northeastern United States during the past 3000 years. Climates of the Past 13:1355-1379.
Wang, Y.^, Heintzman, P. D., Newsom, L., Bigelow, N. H., Wooller, M. J., Shapiro, B., and Williams, J. W. (2017) The southern coastal Beringian land bridge: cryptic refugium or pseudorefugium for woody plants during the Last Glacial Maximum? Journal of Biogeography 44: 1559-1571.

2016

Ordonez, A., Williams, J. W., and Svenning, J. C. (2016) Mapping climate mechanisms likely to favour the emergence of novel communities. Nature Climate Change DOI.
Graham, R. W., Belmecheri, S., Choy, K., Culleton, B., Davies, L. J., Froese, D., Heintzman, P. D., Hritz, C., Kapp, J. D., Newsom, L. A., Rawcliffe, R., Saulnier-Talbot, E., Shapiro, B., Wang, Y., Williams, J. W., and Wooller, M. J. (2016) Timing and causes of a middle Holocene mammoth extinction on St. Paul Island, Alaska. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113: 9310-9314. DOI.
Paciorek, C. J., Goring, S. J., Thurman, A., Cogbill, C. V., Williams, J. W., Mladenoff, D. J., Peters, J. A., Zhu, J., and McLachlan, J. S. (2016) Statistically-estimated tree composition for the northeastern United States at the time of Euro-American settlement. PLoS 11:e0150087. DOI
Lorenz, D. J., Nieto-Lugilde, D., Blois, J. L., Fitzpatrick, M. C., and Williams, J. W. (2016) Downscaled and debiased climate simulations for North America from 21,000 years ago to 2100AD. Scientific Data 3:160048. DOI
Maguire, K. C., Nieto-Lugilde, D., Blois, J. L., Fitzpatrick, M. C., Williams, J. W., Ferrier, S., and Lorenz, D. J. (2016) A controlled comparison of species- and community-level models across novel climates and communities. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 283: 20152817. DOI
Dawson, A., Paciorek, C. J., McLachlan, J. S., Goring, S., Williams, J. W., and Jackson, S. T. (2016) Quantifying pollen-vegetation relationships to reconstruct forests using 19th-century forest composition and pollen data. Quaternary Science Reviews 137: 156-175. DOI
Matthes J. H., Goring S., Williams J. W., and Dietze, M. C. (2016) Benchmarking historical CMIP5 land-climate feedbacks across the Upper Midwest and Northeastern United States. Journal of Geophysical Research. DOI
Kujawa, E.R., Goring, S.J., Dawson, A., Calcote, R., Grimm, E., Hotchkiss, S., Lynch, E.A., McLachlan, J., St-Jacques, J.M., Umbanhowar, C. and Williams, J.W. (2016) The Effect of Anthropogenic Land Cover Change on Pollen-Vegetation Relationships in the American Midwest. The Anthropocene. DOI

2015

Radeloff V. C.†, Williams J. W.†, Bateman B. L., Burke K. D., Carter S. K., Childress E. S., Cromwell K., Gratton C., Hasley A. O., Kraemer B. M., Latzka A. W., Marin-Spiotta E., Meine C. D., Munoz S. E., Neeson T. M., Pidgeon A. M., Rissman A. R., Rivera R. J., Szymanski L. M., and Usinowicz J. (2015) The rise of novelty in ecosystems. Ecological Applications 25: 2051-2068. DOI † these authors contributed equally to the paper. Invited paper for 100th anniversary issue of Ecological Applications.
Wang, Y., Gill, J., Marsicek, J.P., Dierking, A., Shuman, B., & Williams, J.W. (2015) Pronounced variations in Fagus grandifolia abundances in the Great Lakes region during the Holocene. The Holocene. DOI
Maguire, K.C., Nieto-Lugilde, D., Fitzpatrick, M.C., Williams, J.W., & Blois, J.L. (2015) Modeling species and community responses to past, present, and future episodes of climatic and ecological change. Annual Review of Ecology and Evolutionary Systematics 46: 343-368. DOI
Nieto-Lugilde, D., Maguire, K.C., Blois, J., Williams, J.W., & Fitzpatrick, M.C. (2015) Close agreement between pollen-based and forest inventory-based models of vegetation turnover. Global Ecology & Biogeography 24: 905-916. DOI
Munoz, S.E., Gruley, K.E., Massie, A., Fike, D.A., Schroeder, S., & Williams, J.W. (2015) Cahokia’s emergence and decline coincided with shifts of flood frequency on the Mississippi River. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112: 6319-6324. DOI
Goring, S., Dawson, A., Simpson, G., Ram, K., Graham, R. W., Grimm, E. C., and Williams, J. W. (2015) neotoma: A Programmatic Interface to the Neotoma Paleoecological Database. Open Quaternary 1:1-17. DOI

2014

Pederson, N. et al. (2014) Climate remains an important driver of post-European vegetation change in the eastern United States. Global Change Biology. DOI
Ordonez A., Martinuzzi S., Radeloff V. C., and Williams J. W. (2014) Combined speeds of climate and land-use change of the conterminous US until 2050. Nature Climate Change 4: 811-816. DOI
Munoz S. E., Schroeder S., Fike D. A., and Williams J. W. (2014) A record of sustained prehistoric and historic land use from the Cahokia region, Illinois, USA. Geology 42: 499-502. DOI
Munoz S. E., Mladenoff D. J., Schroeder S., and Williams J. W. (2014) Defining the spatial patterns of historical land use associated with the indigenous societies of eastern North America. Journal of Biogeography. DOI
Gavin D. G. et al. (2014) Climate refugia: joint inference from fossil records, species distribution models and phylogeography. New Phytologist 204: 37-54. DOI
Levy O. et al. (2014) Approaches to advance scientific understanding of macrosystems ecology. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 12: 15-23. DOI
Seddon A. W. R. et al. (2014) Looking forward through the past: identification of 50 priority research questions in palaeoecology. Journal of Ecology 102: 256-267. DOI
Blois J. L. et al. (2014) A framework for evaluating the influence of climate, dispersal limitation, and biotic interactions using fossil pollen associations across the late Quaternary. Ecography 37. DOI

2013

Reu B., Zaehle S., Bohn K., Kleidon A., Pavlick R., Schmidtlein S., and Williams J. W. (2013) Ecophysiology of novel vegetation types under scenarios of global warming. Global Ecology and Biogeography 23: 156-167. DOI
Blois J. L., Williams J. W., Fitzpatrick M. C., Jackson S. T., and Ferrier S. (2013) Can space substitute for time in predicting climate-change effects on biodiversity? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110, 9374-9379. DOI
Williams J. W., Blois J. L., Gill J. L., Gonzales L. M., Grimm E. C., Ordonez A., Shuman B., and Veloz S. (2013) Model systems for a no-analog future: Species associations and climates during the last deglaciation. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. DOI
Gill J. L., McLauchlan K. K., Skibbe A. M., Goring S., Zirbel C. R., and Williams J. W. (2013) Linking abundances of the dung fungus Sporormiella to the density of American bison (Bison bison): implications for assessing grazing by megaherbivores in paleorecords. Journal of Ecology 101, 1125–1136. DOI
Ordonez A. and Williams J. W. (2013) Climatic and biotic velocities for woody taxa distributions over the last 16,000 years in eastern North America. Ecology Letters 16, 773-781. DOI
Ordonez A. and Williams J. W. (2013) Projected climate reshuffling based on multivariate climate-availability, climate-analog, and climate-velocity analyses: implications for community disaggregation. Climatic Change 119, 659-675. DOI
Liu Y., Andersen J. J., Williams J. W., and Jackson S. T. (2013) Vegetation history in central Kentucky and Tennessee (USA) during the last glacial and deglacial periods. Quaternary Research 79: 189-198. DOI

2012

Blois J. L., Williams J. W., Fitzpatrick M. C., Ferrier S., Veloz S., He F., Liu Z., Manion G., and Otto-Bliesner B. (2012) Modeling the climatic drivers of spatial patterns in vegetation composition since the Last Glacial Maximum. Ecography 36, 460-473. DOI
Veloz S., Williams J. W., He F., Liu Z., and Otto-Bliesner B. (2012) No-analog climates and shifting realized niches during the late Quaternary: Implications for species distribution models. Global Change Biology 18, 1698-1713. DOI
Williams J. W., Kharouba H. M., Veloz S., Vellend M., McLachlan J. S., Liu Z., Otto-Bliesner B., and He F. (2012) The Ice Age Ecologist: Testing methods for reserve prioritization during the last global warming. Global Ecology & Biogeography 22, 289-301. DOI
Goring S. J., Williams J. W., Blois J. L., Jackson S. T., Paciorek C. J., Booth R. K., Marlon J. R., Blaauw M., and Christen J. A. (2012) Deposition times in the northeastern United States during the Holocene: establishing valid priors for Bayesian age models. Quaternary Science Reviews 48: 54-60. DOI
Gill J. L., Williams J. W., Jackson S. T., Donnelly J. P., and Schellinger G. C. (2012) Climatic and megaherbivory controls on late-glacial vegetation dynamics: A new, high-resolution, multi-proxy record from Silver Lake, Ohio. Quaternary Science Reviews 34: 66-80. DOI
Notaro M., Mauss A., and Williams J. W. (2012) Projected vegetation changes for the American southwest: Combined dynamical modeling and bioclimatic envelope approach. Ecological Applications 22: 1365-1388. DOI
Notaro M., Williams J. W., and Lorenz D. J. (2012) Vegetation and land carbon projections for Wisconsin, USA, in the 21st century. Climate Research 54: 149-165. DOI
Brewer S., Jackson S. T., and Williams J. W. (2012) Paleoecoinformatics: Applying geohistorical data to ecological questions. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 27: 104-112. DOI
Barnosky A. D., Hadly E. A., Bascompte J., Berlow E. L., Brown J. H., Fortelius M., Getz W. M., Harte J., Hastings A., Marquet P. A., Martinez N. D., Mooers A., Roopnarine P., Vermeij G., Williams J. W., Gillespie R., Kitzes J., Marshall C., Matzke N., Mindell D. P., Revilla E., and Smith A. B. (2012) Approaching a state-shift in Earth’s biosphere. Nature 486:52-58. DOI
Schwartz M. W. et al. (2012) Managed relocation: Integrating the scientific, regulatory, and ethical challenges. Bioscience 62: 732-743. DOI
Clark P. U. et al. (2012) Global climate evolution during the last deglaciation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109: E1134-E1142. DOI

2011

Veloz S., Williams J. W., Vimont D. J., Vavrus S., Lorenz D. J., and Notaro M. (2011) Identifying climatic analogs for Wisconsin under 21st-century climate-change scenarios. Climatic Change. DOI
Parker N. E. and Williams J. W. (2011) Influences of climate, cattle density, and lake morphology on Sporormiella abundances in modern lake sediments in the US Great Plains. The Holocene. DOI
Bartlein P. J. et al. (2011) Pollen-based continental climate reconstructions at 6 and 21 ka: a global synthesis. Climate Dynamics 37: 775-802. DOI
Blois, J. L., Williams, J. W., Grimm, E. C., Jackson, S. T., and Graham, R. W. (2011) A methodological framework for improved paleovegetation mapping from late-Quaternary pollen records. Quaternary Science Reviews 30: 1926-1939. DOI
Williams, J. W., Blois, J. L., and Shuman, B. N. (2011) Extrinsic and intrinsic forcing of abrupt ecological change: Case studies from the late Quaternary. Journal of Ecology 99: 667-677. DOI
Williams, J. W., Tarasov, P. A., Brewer, S., and Notaro, M. (2011) Late-Quaternary variations in tree cover at the northern forest-tundra ecotone. Journal of Geophysical Research – Biogeosciences 116: G01017. DOI

2010

Notaro, M., Liu, Z., Gallimore, R. G., Williams, J. W., Gutzler, D., and Collins, S. (2010). The complex seasonal cycle of ecohydrology in the southwest United States. Journal of Geophysical Research – Biogeosciences 115: G04034. DOI
Henderson, A. K., Nelson, D. M., Hu, F. S., Huang, Y., Shuman, B. N., and Williams, J. W. (2010). Holocene precipitation seasonality captured by a dual hydrogen and oxygen isotope approach at Steel Lake, Minnesota. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 300: 205-214. DOI
Liu, Y., Jackson, S. T., Brewer, S., and Williams, J. W. (2010). Assessing antiquity and turnover of terrestrial ecosystems in eastern North America using fossil pollen data: a preliminary study. Pages in IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science. DOI
Elias, P. M., Menon, G., Wetzel, B. K., and Williams, J. W. (2010). Barrier requirements as the evolutionary “driver” of epidermal pigmentation in humans. American Journal of Human Biology 22: 526-537. DOI
Tabor, K., and Williams, J. W. (2010). Globally downscaled climate projections for assessing the conservation impacts of climate change. Ecological Applications 20: 554-565. DOI
Williams, J.W., Shuman, B., Bartlein, P.J., Diffenbaugh, N.S. and Webb, T., III (2010) Rapid, time-transgressive, and variable responses to early-Holocene midcontinental drying in North America. Geology 38: 135-138. DOI
Wahl E., Schoelzel C., Williams J., and Tigrek S. (2010) Comment. Journal of the American Statistical Association 105: 900-905. DOI

2009

Gill, J. L., Williams, J. W., Jackson, S. T., Lininger, K., and Robinson, G. S. (2009). Pleistocene megafaunal collapse preceded novel plant communities and enhanced fire regimes. Science 326: 1100-1103. DOI Winner of Ecological Society of America’s Cooper Award. Media attention included interviews with NPR and BBC and articles in the New York Times, the Economist, and Science News.
Gonzales, L. M., Williams, J. W., and Grimm, E. C. (2009). Expanded response-surfaces: A new method to reconstruct paleoclimates from fossil pollen assemblages that lack modern analogues. Quaternary Science Reviews 28: 3315-3332. DOI
Gonzales, L.M., Grimm, E.C., Williams, J.W. and Nordheim, E. (2009) A modern plant-climate research dataset for modelling eastern North American plant taxa. Grana 48: 1-18. DOI
Williams, J.W., Shuman, B. and Bartlein, P.J. (2009) Rapid responses of the Midwestern prairie-forest ecotone to early Holocene aridity. Global and Planetary Change 66: 195-207. DOI
Elias, P. M., Menon, G., Wetzel, B. K., and Williams, J. W. (2009). Evidence that stress to the epidermal barrier influenced the development of pigmentation in humans. Pigment Cell and Melanoma Research 22:420-434. DOI
Williams, J. W., and Shuman, B. (2008). Obtaining accurate and precise environmental reconstructions from the modern analog technique and North American surface pollen dataset. Quaternary Science Reviews 27: 669-687. DOI

2008

Williams, J. W., Gonzales, L., Kaplan, J. O. (2008) Leaf area index for northern and eastern North America at the Last Glacial Maximum: A data-model comparison. Global Ecology and Biogeography 17: 122-134. DOI
Gonzales, L., Williams, J. W., Kaplan, J. O. (2008) Variations in leaf area index in northern and eastern North America over the past 21,000 years: A data-model comparison. Quaternary Science Reviews 27: 1453-1466. DOI
Thomas, C.D. Ohlemüller, R., Anderson, B., Hickler, T., Miller, P. A., Sykes, M. T., Williams, J. W. (2008) Exporting the ecological effects of climate change. EMBO Reports 9 S1: S28-S33. DOI
Minckley, T.A. Bartlein, P. J., Whitlock, C., Shuman, B. N., Williams, J. W., Davis, O. K. (2008) Associations among modern pollen, vegetation, and climate in western North America. Quaternary Science Reviews 27: 1939-2094. DOI

2007

Williams, J. W. and Jackson, S. T. (2007) Novel Climates, No-Analog Plant Communities, and Ecological Surprises: Past and Future. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 5: 475-482. DOI Winner of ESA 100 Notable Papers award.
Williams, J. W., Jackson, S. T., Kutzbach, J. E. (2007) Projected distributions of novel and disappearing climates by 2100AD. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104: 5738-5742. DOI. Media reporting included interviews with NBC Nightly News, NPR All Things Considered, and BBC World News, and articles in Discover Magazine and Science.
Tarasov, P.E., Williams, J.W., Andreev, A.A., Nakagawa, T., Bezrukova, E., Herzschuh, U., Igarashi, Y., Müller, H. (2007) Satellite- and pollen-based quantitative woody cover reconstructions for northern Asia: verification and application to late-Quaternary pollen data. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 264: 284-298. DOI

2006

Diffenbaugh, N. S., Ashfaq, M., Shuman, B., Williams, J. W., Bartlein, P. J. (2006). Summer aridity in the United States: Response to Mid-Holocene changes in insolation and sea surface temperature. Geophysical Research Letters 33. DOI
Seabloom, E. W., Williams, J. W., Slayback, D., Stoms, D. M., Viers, J. H., Dobson, A. P. (2006) Human impacts, plant invasion, and imperiled species in California. Ecological Applications 16: 1338-1350. DOI

2005

Notaro, M., Liu, Z., and Williams, J. W. (2006) Observed vegetation-climate feedbacks in the United States. Journal of Climate 19: 763-786. DOI
Kutzbach, J. E., Williams, J. W., and Vavrus, S. J. (2005) Simulated 21st century changes in regional water balance of the Great Lakes region and links to changes in global temperature and poleward moisture transport. Geophysical Research Letters 32. DOI
Jennings, M. D., Williams, J. W., Stromberg, M. R. (2005) Diversity and productivity across plant communities of the inland northwest, USA. Oecologia 143/144: 607-618. DOI
Williams, J. W., Seabloom, E. W., Slayback, D., Stoms, D. M., Viers, J. H. (2005) Anthropogenic impacts upon plant species richness and net primary productivity in California. Ecology Letters 8: 127-137. DOI
Whitmore, J., Gajewski, K., Sawada, M., Williams, J. W., Shuman, B., Bartlein, P. J., Minckley, T., Viau, A. E., Webb, T., III, Anderson, P. M., and Brubaker, L. B. (2005). North American and Greenland modern pollen data for multi-scale paleoecological and paleoclimatic applications. Quaternary Science Reviews 24, 1828-1848. DOI

2004

Chalcraft, D. R., Williams, J. W., Smith, M. D., Willig, M. R. (2004) Scale dependence in the species-richness-productivity relationship: The role of species turnover. Ecology 85: 2701-2708. DOI
Jackson, S. T. and Williams, J. W. (2004) Modern analogs in Quaternary paleoecology: Here today, gone yesterday, gone tomorrow? Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 32: 495-537. DOI
Williams, J. W., Shuman, B. N., Webb, T., III, Bartlein, P. J., Leduc, P. (2004) Late Quaternary vegetation dynamics in North America: Scaling from taxa to biomes. Ecological Monographs 74: 309-334. Editor’s Choice in Science, May 21, 2004. DOI

2003

Gavin, D. G., Oswald, W. W., Wahl, E. R., Williams, J. W. (2003) A statistical approach to evaluating distance metrics and analog assignments for pollen records. Quaternary Research 60: 356-367. DOI
Williams, J. W. and Jackson, S. T. (2003) Palynological and AVHRR observations of modern vegetational gradients in eastern North America. The Holocene 13: 485-497. DOI
Williams, J. W. (2003) Variations in tree cover in North America since the Last Glacial Maximum. Global and Planetary Change 35: 1-23. DOI

2002

Williams, J. W., Post, D. M., Cwynar, L. C., Lotter, A. F., Levesque, A. J. (2002) Rapid and widespread vegetation responses to past climate change in the North Atlantic region. Geology 30: 971-974. Featured in Post (2003) TREE commentary. DOI
Shuman, B. N., Webb III, T., Bartlein, P. J., Williams, J. W. (2002) The anatomy of a climatic oscillation: Vegetation change in eastern North America during the Younger Dryas chronozone. Quaternary Science Reviews 21: 1777-1791. DOI

2001

Williams, J. W., Shuman, B. N., Webb III, T. (2001) Dissimilarity analyses of late-Quaternary vegetation and climate in eastern North America. Ecology 82: 3346-3362. [DOI](https://dx.doi.org/10.1890/0012-9658(2001) Editor’s Choice in Science (2002) 295: 409. Winner of Ecological Society of America’s Cooper Award.

2000 and prior years

Williams, J. W., Webb III, T., Richard, P. J. H., Newby, P. (2000) Late Quaternary biomes of Canada and the eastern United States. Journal of Biogeography 27: 585-607. DOI
Edwards, M. E. et al. (2000) Pollen-based biomes for Beringia 18,000, 6000, and 0 14C yr. B.P. Journal of Biogeography 27: 521-554. DOI
Williams, J. W., Bartlein, P. J., and Webb III, T. (2000) Data-model comparisons for eastern North America - inferred biomes and climate values from pollen data. Proceedings of the 3rd Paleoclimate Modeling Intercomparison Project Workshop, Oct. 4-8, 1999. Montreal, Canada. Edited by P. Braconnot. WCRP-111, WMO/TD-No. 1007, pp. 77-86.
Williams, J. W., Webb III, T., Shuman, B. N., and Bartlein, P. J. (2000) Do low CO2 concentrations affect pollen-based reconstructions of LGM climates? A response to ‘Physiological significance of low atmospheric CO2 for plant-climate interactions’ by Cowling and Sykes. Quaternary Research 53: 402-404. DOI
Jackson, S. T., Webb, R. S., Anderson, K. H., Overpeck, J. T., Webb III, T., Williams, J. W., and Hansen, B. C. S. (2000) Vegetation and environments in eastern North America during the last glacial maximum. Quaternary Science Reviews 19: 489-508. DOI
Williams, J. W., Summers, R., and Webb III, T. (1998) Applying plant functional types to construct biome maps from eastern North American pollen data: comparisons with model results. Quaternary Science Reviews 17: 607-627. DOI
Williams, J. W. (1995) Factors controlling the formation of fossiliferous beds in the Devonian Columbus limestone at Marblehead Quarry, Marblehead, Ohio. Ohio Journal of Sciences 95: 325-330. (OJS Paper of the Year)

Book Chapters

Williams, J.W. & Shuman, B.N. (2013). Pollen records, postglacial: Northeastern North America. In Encyclopedia of Quaternary Science (eds S.A. Elias & C.J. Mock). Elsevier, Amsterdam.
Grimm, E.C., Keltner, J., Cheddadi, R., Hicks, S., Lézine, A.-M., Berrio, J.C., & Williams, J.W. (2013). Pollen databases and their application. In Encyclopedia of Quaternary Science (eds S.A. Elias & C.J. Mock), pp. 831-838. Elsevier.
Lorenz, D. J., Vavrus, S. J., Vimont, D. J., Williams, J. W., Notaro, M., Young, J. A., DeWeaver, E. T., and Hopkins, E. J. (2009). Wisconsin’s changing climate: temperature. Understanding Climate Change: Climate Variability, Predictability, and Change in the Midwestern United States. Edited by S. C. Pryor. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, pp. 76-87.
Lorenz, D. J., Vavrus, S. J., Vimont, D. J., Williams, J. W., Notaro, M., Young, J. A., DeWeaver, E. T., and Hopkins, E. J. (2009). Wisconsin’s changing climate: hydrologic cycle. Understanding Climate Change: Climate Variability, Predictability, and Change in the Midwestern United States. Edited by S. C. Pryor. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, pp. 135-144.
Williams, J. W. (2009) Quaternary Vegetation Distributions. Encyclopedia of Paleoclimatology and Ancient Environments. Edited by V. Gornitz. Springer-Verlag.
Cook, E.R. Bartlein, P. J., Diffenbaugh, N. S., Seager, R., Shuman, B., Webb, R. S., Williams, J. W., Woodhouse, C. A. (2008) Hydrological variability and change, Abrupt Climate Change, A Report by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research, Washington, DC.
Williams, J. W. (2006) Postglacial pollen records of northeastern North America. Encyclopedia of Quaternary Science. Edited by S. A. Elias. Elsevier, Amsterdam.
Grimm, E. C., Keltner, J., Cheddadi, R., Hicks, S., Lézine, A.-M., Berrio, J. C., and Williams, J. W.. (2006) Pollen databases and their application. Encyclopedia of Quaternary Science. Edited by S. A. Elias. Elsevier, Amsterdam.
Webb, T., Shuman, B. N., Williams, J. W. (2004) Climatically forced vegetation dynamics in North America during the late Quaternary period. The Quaternary Period in the United States. Edited by Gillespie, A. R., Porter, S. C., Atwater, B. F. Elsevier, pp. 459-478.

Books

Williams, J. W., B. Shuman, P. J. Bartlein, J. Whitmore, K. Gajewski, M. Sawada, T. Minckley, S. Shafer, A. E. Viau, T. Webb, III, P. M. Anderson, L. B. Brubaker, C. Whitlock, and O. K. Davis. (2006) An Atlas of Pollen-Vegetation-Climate Relationships for the United States and Canada. American Association of Stratigraphic Palynologists Foundation, Dallas, TX. 273p