|
Research title Climate variability of the last 1000 years in the NW Pacific: high resolution, multi-biomarker records from lake and ocean sediments. Summary of research Global climatic change is one of the most serious environmental issues that has emerged in the past few decades. Major efforts are focused on predicting how the climate will change in the future. However, to properly predict these changes, it is essential to have detailed information on the past. This information can be used to test our climate models to find out how accurate they are. As we do not have instrumental climate records that go that far back in time, we rely on geological archives to gain this information. My main research interest is examining the variable organic geochemical properties of sedimentary records to gain a better understanding on past environmental changes.
My work is focussed on biomarkers (molecular fossils) found in sediments from Lake Toyoni in Japan. I am currently working on the relationship of these biomarkers (alkenones, higher plant waxes and bacterial tetraethers) to environmental changes. The current focus of my PhD is long-chained alkenones (LCA). Although LCA are found in marine sediments all over the world, their occurrence in lake sediments is highly scattered. My aim is to isolate and culture the alkenone producer/s in Lake Toyoni. This will allow us to identify the main alkenone producer of the lake and gain a better understanding of their life cycle and ecology.
Prior to starting a PhD at Glasgow University, I studied Marine Science (with Arctic studies) at the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) whilst based at the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS). During my undergraduate studies, I spent a semester at the world’s most Northern University centre based on Svalbard (UNIS) studying the effects of pollution and climate change in the Arctic. Supervisors Dr James Bendle
Dr Vernon Phoenix
|
