{"id":114,"date":"2015-12-26T14:08:53","date_gmt":"2015-12-26T19:08:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.berry.edu\/ztaylor\/?page_id=114"},"modified":"2026-09-25T20:53:04","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T01:53:04","slug":"home-3","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.berry.edu\/ztaylor\/","title":{"rendered":"Home"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Me\"<\/a><\/figure> Zachary P. Taylor
<\/strong>Professor and Chair
Department of Environmental Science and Studies
Berry College
PO Box 490083
Mt. Berry, GA 30149-0083
706.236.2277
ztaylor@berry.edu<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I am a broadly-trained environmental and earth scientist who is interested in the mechanisms and impacts of climate and environmental change.  My interdisciplinary research and teaching interests led to my position as the first full-time environmental science faculty member at Berry College<\/a>.  I am currently teaching<\/a> several environmental science classes and get to make use of a remarkable classroom\u2013Berry\u2019s 27,000 acre campus.  Many days I am lucky enough to wear my boots to class when my students and I are studying a stream or analyzing a soil profile.  As a faculty member at a liberal arts college, I also have a robust research program<\/a> where my students and I study lake sediments to reconstruct climate, vegetation, and fire dynamics from a host of locations including Colorado, South Carolina, and Costa Rica.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In the past few years, I have become involved in land management on Berry’s campus. I currently chair the Educational Land Management (ELM) Committee, assist with the Longleaf Pine Project, and am part of team exploring the feasibility of a biological research station on campus. I am also the faculty lead for the Berry Burn Team and teach a class in Prescribed Fire where students earn their Wildland Firefighter Type 2 certification.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

I completed my MS and PhD in Geography (though both were co-advised by geologists) at the University of Tennessee.  My dissertation used stable carbon isotope analysis to examine spatial variability in lake sediments at a small lake in Costa Rica.  This work also led to new findings about the contribution of late-Holocene droughts to the decline of maize agriculture in the region.  I also have a BS in Environmental Science from the University of Denver where I was involved with a research project examining deglaciation and Holocene precipitation reconstruction.  For more academic information, please see my CV<\/a>.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

When I am not teaching, in the field, or in the lab, you\u2019ll find me hiking, skiing, or otherwise exploring the outdoors.  Since I grew up in Colorado and spent a lot of my time at the University of Denver playing in the mountains<\/a>, being outside is a way of life.  Now as a parent, I enjoy passing this ethos on to my two sons.<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zachary P. Taylor Professor and Chair Department of Environmental Science and Studies Berry College PO Box 490083 Mt. Berry, GA 30149-0083 706.236.2277 ztaylor@berry.edu I am a broadly-trained environmental and earth […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-114","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.berry.edu\/ztaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.berry.edu\/ztaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.berry.edu\/ztaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.berry.edu\/ztaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.berry.edu\/ztaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":57,"href":"https:\/\/sites.berry.edu\/ztaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":679,"href":"https:\/\/sites.berry.edu\/ztaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/114\/revisions\/679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.berry.edu\/ztaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}