UPPSALA UNIVERSITY: Department of Earth Sciences: Palaeobiology: Quaternary palaeoecology

Quaternary palaeoecology

Quaternary palaeoecology encompasses all aspects of the study of the Earth over the last 1.6 million years or so. This is the most recent period of time characterized by 'ice ages': times when large parts of the Earth's surface, especially in the northern hemisphere, were covered by continental scale ice sheets.

The research and teaching of the Quaternary palaeobiology program today covers the following broad aspects of Quaternary research:

Biological, including research based on pollen, stomata, diatoms, plant macrofossils and testate amoebae
Stratigraphy, especially the nature of Swedish Quaternary deposits

Lake coring in Uppland, Sweden...thick ice this year!!!

Former research projects:

Sweden

Vegetation changes induced by variations in human settlements and land-use (Elisabeth Almgren)
Holocene climate dynamics in Sweden (Karin Antonsson)
The immigration of spruce (Picea) into Sweden (Thomas Giesecke)
DNA in pollen (Laura Parducci)
Tree-line palaeoclimatology (Heikki Seppä)
Conifer stomata analysis in late-Quaternary palaeoecology of Scandinavia (Charlotte Sweeney)

Europe

Scottish woodland dynamics (Keith Bennett: 1985-1998)
DIACAL, a calibration model for the quantification of Holocene salinity changes in the Baltic Sea area (Lina Ljungfeldt, Elinor Andrén)
Quaternary palaeoecology and palaeoclimatology of Scandinavia (Heikki Seppä)

South America

Late Quaternary environmental dynamics of southwestern Chile (Keith Bennett: 1991-1998)
Late Quaternary dynamics of western Tierra del Fuego (Keith Bennett, Camilla Porter)
Present and past coastal dune environments of southwest Buenos Aires, Argentina (Sonia Fontana)
A millennial scale assessment of climatic change in Tierra del Fuego (Dmitri Mauquoy)

Sub-Antarctic

Environmental responses to climate change on Marion Island (Dmitri Mauquoy)