Name: Lars Beierlein
Institute: Alfred Wegener Intitute
Department: Bio Science Division
Phone: +49(471)4831-1326
Email: lars.beierlein(at)awi.de
Web link: http://www.awi.de/People/show?lbeierle
PhD-project title: Predicting the future of northern North Atlantic shallow water ecosystems from fossil bioarchives
What can we learn from the past about the future of coastal marine ecosystems in the northern North Atlantic? Global warming will change the environmental conditions of these systems. These changes will be particularly dramatic in sub-Arctic and Arctic regions, which are looking forward to climate conditions experienced during the Holocene Optimum and during warm periods of Pleistocene and Pliocene.
Biogenic carbonate archives from those epochs, particularly mollusk shells, contain information on past environmental conditions in their morphology and anatomy, i.e. growth rate and carbonate structure, and in their biogeochemistry, i.e. stable isotope ratios and trace element concentrations. We will analyze such bioarchives from Spitsbergen (Holocene Optimum), Greenland (Pleistocene) and Iceland (Pliocene) in order to reconstruct local environmental conditions during these warm periods with emphasis on intra-annual variability (how strong was the seasonal signal?) and decadal oscillations (can we see NAO or ENSO like patterns?). A comparison of our findings with other palaeo-records and model predictions can facilitate the understanding of past climate dynamics.
Our prime target organism is the long-lived “ocean quahog” Arctica islandica that shows a wide northern-boreal distribution and was present in that area during the last 5 million years at least. In order to maximize the gain from these archives, some effort will be put on the calibration of particular proxies using recent shells of A. islandica. Specific tasks are the development of a multi-proxy model for primary production and the inter-calibration of temperature proxies. Working on this topic demands a background in marine ecology, biogeochemistry and climate sciences.
Start of doctoral thesis: 01.07.2011
Thesis Committee:
Prof. Dr. Thomas Brey (AWI)
Prof. Dr. Gerrit Lohmann (AWI)
Prof. Dr. Bernd R. Schöne (University of Mainz)
Dr. Torsten Bickert (University of Bremen)
Dr. Gernot Nehrke (AWI)
Committee Meetings: 15.08.2012, 25.02.2013
Publications
Maurer A-F, Galer SJG, Knipper C, Beierlein L, Nunn EV, Peters D, Tütken T, Alt KW, Schöne BR, 2012. “Bioavailable 87Sr/86Sr in different environmental samples – Effects of anthropogenic contamination and implications for isoscapes in past migration studies”. Science of the Total Environment 433, 216—229.
Conferences:
3rd Young Scientists Conference, Kiel, Germany, Poster presentation: Beierlein L, Brey T and Salvigsen O, “Holocene bivalves from Spitsbergen as palaeo-climatic bio-archives”, 1-2 October 2012.
EGU General Assembly 2012, Vienna, Poster presentation: Beierlein L, Schöne BR, Nunn EV, Radermacher P and Maurer A-F, “High-resolution climate archives from archaeological sites in Central Europe: new data from freshwater bivalve shells”, 03-08 April 2011.
Centenary Meeting of the Paläontologische Gesellschaft, Berlin, Germany, Talk: Beierlein L, Nehrke G and Brey T, “Confocal Raman microscopy and its contribution to sclerochronology”, 24-29 September 2012.
Helmholtz Research School on Earth System Science, Annual Retreat 2012, Bremerhaven, “Deutsches Auswandererhaus“, Poster Presentation: Beierlein, L et al., “Confocal Raman microscopy and its contribution to sclerochronology“. 30 November, 2012.
Teaching and student supervision:
Organisation team for the International Summer School on “Climate Change in the Marine Realm” in the European Campus of Excellence framework. September 10th – 24th, 2012. Sylt and Bremen, Germany.
POMOR project, Tamara Trofimova, October – December 2012.
Bachelor thesis, Florian Bauer, 2011 “Masterchronologie des Schalenwachstums von Arctica islandica bei Helgoland”.