PhD projekt until 2017:
Changes in vegetation and climate using multi-proxy analysis in western Amazonia during the late Quaternary
Amazon tropical rain forest has a variety of landscapes that are regulated by climatic factors and its seasonality, for instance Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), El Niño phenomenon, air masses from the Atlantic Ocean and geographic barriers such as the Andean Cordilleras and the Guiana Tepuis. Amazonia is one of the most diverse regions and plays an important role in biogeochemical cycles, especially in the carbon and water cycle.If we want to understand the role of the Amazonia regarding current and future global change, we need to understand the past using paleoecological methods. We want to reconstruct late Pleistocene and Holocene vegetation and climate dynamics in western Amazonia (Lago Amapá, southwestern Brazil and Serra do Tepequem, northwestern Brazil), using pollen, spores, charcoal particles, dating, sedimentological and mineralogical proxies. It is of our special interest to find new insights about past vegetation dynamics, taking into consideration how climate (ITCZ, El Niño phenomenon, etc.) changed through time. We are also interested to study the role of human impact in western Amazonia.
This PhD project is in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Marcondes Lima da Costa, Belem, Brazil
Projektleitung: Prof. Dr. Hermann Behling
Schlüsselwörter: Amazon, Brazil, climate dynamics, pollen analysis, vegetation history, biodiversity
Förderung: DAAD-Colfuturo scholarship