How will marine organisms respond to climate change? What impact will this have on their biomineralization pathways? And what can we learn from the geological record, where evidence of past environmental changes is preserved?
These central questions, focused on environmental change and its effects on calcifying plankton, drive my research — particularly as climate change remains one of the most pressing challenges of our time.
To investigate these questions, I primarily combine laboratory culture experiments — which allow detailed insights into biomineralization processes — with fieldwork and sampling from research vessels. To study the direct effects of climate change on the biomineralization pathway, I successfully apply an integrated approach using biological and geochemical techniques, including microelectrode measurements, fluorescent dyes, dynamic calcium labeling, and the analysis of trace elements and stable isotopes in marine calcifiers.
Furthermore, I develop new proxies for ocean acidification and warming across both modern and paleontological timescales, aiming to improve the interpretation of the geological archive. My work is centered around global climate change, since this is one of the most pressing challenges our society is facing at the moment. I have two main research foci, one directed into the future and one directed into the past. In combination with temperature reconstructions, accurate atmospheric paleo-CO2 estimates are necessary to validate models that aim at predicting global temperature rise related to CO2 -forcing mechanisms. I am working at the development of new methods to reconstruct atmospheric pCO2 going back in time using marine calcifying plankton- pteropods and foraminifera, which are present in all oceans. I use state-of-the art analytical techniques such as Laser-Ablation-ICP-Mass -Spectrometry to measure the trace-elemental composition of their shells. Currently I am establishing a pCO2 calibration using pteropods that have been cultured under a range of pCO2, which I will then implement on pteropod samples from a 10-year sediment trap in the Arctic and on an Arctic sediment core.