MARINGEOLOGI OG GLACIOLOGI
ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH

	Research team Emily Bradshaw egb@geus.dk Antoon Kuijpers aku@geus.dk Birger Larsen - bil@geus.dk Anne Birgitte Nielsen abn@geus.dk Niels E. Poulsen nep@geus.dk J. Peter Rasmussen per@geus.dk
Core photo

Introduction

The environment research at the department includes many interdisciplinary activities with contributions from the biology, geochemistry, geophysiscs, micro- and macropalaeontology, palaeoecology, palynology, sedimentology, and stratigraphy, covering marine and lake environmental aspects and have achieved positive results regarding some of these - for example description of acidification, eutrophication, redox conditions, waste pollution, dispersion into the environment of chemicals, etc. All environmental action depends critically on the underlying knowledge base and a basic understanding of the concept "ENVIRONMENTAL IMPORTANCE" in relation to time and usual natural changes, so that reliable projection of the development of our climate, environment and nature can be made. What do we really know about:

• the state of the environment?
• nutrient suply and productivity
• linking the marine and terrestrial records
• anthropogenic impact measured in view of natural variation
• the condition and development of nature in the immediate past?
• distinguishing between natural conditions on one hand and man-made changes
• climate influence on environmental history
• palaeoclimatic changes to understand the chemical and biological changes in the environment and assess recent changes possibly induced by anthropogenic influence
• processes driving at least the Late Glacial oscillations in comparison to those operative during the Holocene and will continue to shape future environment and climate

The overall objective for the department is to study the environmental historical development of marine, terrestical and lacustrine catchments in order to improve our understanding of regional and world-wide environmental systems. Short and long term perspectives of environmental changes, affecting a range of time scales: 1-10 years, the last 500 years, and the last 10 000 years. The results should reveal the type and scale of ecosystem response to natural environmental and climatic variation during the Holocene and help identify leads and lags in environment and climate responses.

Other web sites

• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC
• National Council for Science and the Environment National Library for the Environment
• The European Environment Agency: Europe's gateway to environmental information

Edited by:
Niels E. Poulsen, GEUS - nep@geus.dk