Research group

Gerald Auer, Group Leader

My research focuses on the impact of past climate variability on ocean currents and marine nutrient cycles. My aim is to understand how climate change affects marine ecosystems and what role the oceans and the life in them play in mitigating and stabilising the Earth's climate. To this end, I combine the disciplines of (micro)palaeontology and stratigraphy with those of (bio)geochemistry, as well as physical and chemical (palaeo)oceanography. Since 2015, these research projects have also taken place within the framework of the International Ocean Discovery Programme (IODP).

 

Anna Arrigoni, PhD student & university assistant (2020 - )

Project: "The Leeuwin Current System during the Middle Pleistocene Transition: foraminiferal assemblage and stable isotope analysis"

 

Tamara Hechemer, PhD student & project researcher (2022 - )

Project: "Intermediate water variability in the Middle to Late Miocene Indian Ocean - Stable Isotope Analysis and Foraminifera assemblages along a N-S transects (ODP Sites 752, 707 and 722)"

Tamara is a member of the FWF project MIO:TRANS - Nutrient cycling in the Miocene Indian Ocean. MIO:TRANS investigates the interplay between primary productivity and upwelling of nutrient-rich deep waters and climate change. Our aim is to generate climate and primary productivity data from geological time windows that can be correlated with expected changes in present-day climate change. Some of the best analogues for future climate scenarios are found between 8 and 15 million years ago in the Miocene - the target interval of MIO:TRANS.

Xabier Puentes-Jorge, PhD student & project researcher (2022 - )

Project: "Calcareous nannofossils assemblages during Middle-Late Miocene to reconstruct Indian Ocean paleoproductivity (ODP Sites 707-752)"

Xabier is a member of the FWF project MIO:TRANS - Nutrient Cycles in the Miocene Indian Ocean. MIO:TRANS investigates the interplay between primary productivity and upwelling of nutrient-rich deep waters and climate change. Our aim is to generate climate and primary productivity data from geological time windows that can be correlated with expected changes in present-day climate change. Some of the best analogues for future climate scenarios are found between 8 and 15 million years ago in the Miocene - the target interval of MIO:TRANS.

Arthur Borzi, project assistant (2024 - )

Arthur is a member of the FWF project MIO:TRANS - Nutrient Cycles in the Miocene Indian Ocean. MIO:TRANS investigates the interplay between primary productivity and upwelling of nutrient-rich deep waters and climate change. Our aim is to generate climate and primary productivity data from geological time windows that can be correlated with expected changes in present-day climate change. Some of the best analogues for future climate scenarios are found between 8 and 15 million years ago in the Miocene - the target interval of MIO:TRANS.

Former group members

Arianna Valentina Del Gaudio, PhD student (2020 - 2024) & Post PhD student (2024)

Patricia Schilcher, project assistant in the FWF project MIO:TRANS (2023-2024)

Simon Schretter, project assistant in the FWF project MIO:TRANS (2023)