Research
1) Millenial-scale sclerochronology of coralline red algae for reconstructing sea surface temperatures of extratropical seas
Core activities of my research group are concerned with using coralline red algae as high-resolution archives of late Quaternary marine climates. Focusing on mid- and high-latitude regions we are currently generating multicentury to millenial-scale algal-based climate records from the Bering Sea and northwest Atlantic.
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2) Coral-based reconstructions of Caribbean climate and river discharge histories
The goals of this research are to examine recently collected century-long coral reef records from Tobago, which is located within the discharge sediment plume of the Orinoco Delta (Venezuela). Using luminescence and trace element analysis (Sr/Ca and Ba/Ca) we study climate variability and discharge history of the Orinoco River.
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3) Annually-resolved high-latitude climates during the Paleocene/Eocene derived from exceptionally preserved wood
We are currently exploiting the recent finding of exceptionally well-preserved
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4) Influence of Nutrients on Extratropical Shallow Water Carbonates
As part of an interdisciplinary international research effort, the complex interplay of nutrients and other oceanographic controls on modern shallow water carbonate depositional systems was quantified. We combined long-term field monitoring of oceanography with sedimentologic and biologic investigations in a range of modern carbonate environments distributed along a latitudinal gradient in the natural field laboratory of the Gulf of California, Mexico.
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5) Miocene carbonates as indicators of climate change
Faunal or floral turnovers and community replacements are commonly observed throughout geologic history in carbonate settings and can be attributed to a variety of climatic, plate tectonic, oceanographic, biogeographic, and evolutionary controls. Sea-level fluctuations and changes in temperature and nutrients, which are supplied to the shallow ocean by either land runoff or vertical mixing processes such as upwelling, are the most important controls over short- and medium-term time scales.
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6) Environmental Aspects of Deep-Sea Mining
In addition to numerous human-induced negative impacts to ocean ecosystems, a potential future threat has been the long-predicted onset of mineral exploitation in the deep sea. Deep-sea mining has now become economically and technologically feasible and is predicted to start by 2009. However, there are serious concerns about environmental management strategies of mining activities.
7) Sclerochronology of gastropod opercula (Turbo sarmaticus) for determining interaction between humans and environment in the Middle Stone Age site of Pinnacle Point, South Africa
Project leader: Mariagrazia Galimberti, Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town, South Africa.
The Paleoclimate Lab collaborates with state-of-the-art imaging and image analysis techniques.
The aim of this project is to detect whether the evolution of modern human behaviour in anatomically modern humans was
driven by changes in the environment. The period taken into consideration is the South African Middle Stone
Age (280 - 30 kya). Remains of the gastropod Turbo sarmaticus are found in very early archaeological sites
of the Southern Coast of South Africa. Sclerochronology, performed on gastropod opercula, is helping to
understand their growth, whereas opercula-derived oxygen isotope ratios are used to reconstruct ocean surface
temperature. A comparison of Middle Stone Age and modern specimen data, linked to the archaeological assemblage
of the Pinnacle Point site, is expected to explain whether variations recorded in human subsistence methods were
influenced by environmental changes.