Kam-biu Liu is Professor and Chair of the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences at Louisiana State University, USA. As a paleoclimatologist and paleoecologist he has worked extensively on the Holocene history of hurricane activities and coastal ecosystem changes in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean regions. His broader research interests include the use of fossil pollen, lake sediments, and ice cores to reconstruct the patterns of climate and environmental changes on centennial to millennial timescales in different parts of the world.