SEMINARIS DE LA FACULTAT DE GEOLOGIA I L'INSTITUT DE CIÈNCIES DE LA TERRA 'JAUME ALMERA'
Hendrik VOGEL
(Climate Impacts Research Centre (CIRC), Dept. Ecology and Environmental Science, Universitat d'Umeå, Suècia)

Investigating paleoenvironments, neotectonics and evolutionary processes using sediment records from ancient lakes Ohrid (Macedonia/Albania) and Towuti (Indonesia)

Ancient lakes are widely recognized as important terrestrial archives of long-term climatic, environmental and neotectonic changes. Additionally, these lakes are a major focal point of biological and ecological research. Key concepts in evolutionary biology have been partly developed from studies of ancient lakes. Geoscientific and evolutionary research themes can thus be combined to tackle longstanding questions about the interaction of the geo- and biosphere of our planet by using sediment records from ancient lakes.

Numerous lakes worldwide exist that allow for a combination of these research themes. However, the most outstanding include Lake Ohrid (Macedonia/Albania), and Lake Towuti (Sulawesi/Indonesia). Both lakes are of tectonic origin, are thought to have formed several hundreds of kiloyears ago, and harbour a large degree of faunal and floral endemism. Over the recent years seismic reflection data and gravity and piston cores have been collected from both lakes documenting their suitability for studies aiming at long term environmental, tectonic and biological reconstructions. However, the existing sediment sequences recovered from these lakes are too short to answer longstanding questions in evolutionary biology and climate dynamics over several glacial-interglacial cycles in these key regions. Deep drilling projects, under the umbrella of the International Continental Scientific Deep Drilling Program (ICDP), have been designed for these lakes by multinational research groups in order to

Drill cores reaching the depths of the bedrock from these lakes will help to (i) obtain more precise information about the age and origin of these lakes, (ii) unravel the seismotectonic history including effects of major earthquakes, (iii) obtain a continuous record of climate and environmental change in these key regions, and (iv) better understand the impact of major geological and environmental events on evolutionary patterns

Dia: 15 de Novembre de 2011
Lloc: Sala d'actes de l'Institut Jaume Almera
Hora: 12 h