The Seventh International Symposium on Recurrence Plots took place this August in São Paulo, Brazil. Norbert was one of the organizers and had the opportunity to present (besides more theoretical work) also a study partly developed within QUEST: Multiplex Recurrence Networks. In this work, together with Deniz Eroglu (Imperial College, London, UK, now at Northwestern University, Evanston, US) and Martina Stebich (Senckenberg Museum, Weimar, Germany) the recurrence plot approach was combined with the multiplex network concept to investigate regime transitions in multivariate palaeoclimate proxy records.
Lab meeting at JGU Mainz
Adam is currently visiting the JGU Mainz lab, testing various fluid compositions (see proof in figure). Denis and (now Dr.) Max were very helpful in explaining the artificial cave and issues related with precipitating carbonates.
Seb and Matthias joined from RUB to discuss experiments that Matthias will conduct during his MSc thesis in Mainz and to plan the field and lab work in New Zealand later this year. Cinthya, Inken, and Max will visit Waikato in winter and perform experiments in Adam´s lab, take care of the monitoring and to take samples from speleothems.
A very long, but productive day was concluded with dinner and beer at the Main terraces.
Adam and Denis during fluid testing.
Hallo Welt!
The QUEST Team will soon be reinforced by our new PhD student at RUB – Cinthya. To prepare her for regional Pott-Communication she currently participates in a German Language course in Cologne (the wrong side of the Rhine river). The DAAD is doing an excellent job, not only providing the German training, but also offering get-togethers, excursions and much more. If this really helps to prepare Cinthya for the traditional Bochum “Currywurst”* – well, we´ll see…
*the true Currywurst is – of course – only available in Berlin!
A visit from the Antipodes!
Adam is on his way to visit the QUEST Team in Mainz!
To start work in the virtual cave and to organize oh so many details around the planned experiments with Denis and Max, as well as to have a good pint of German brew, Adam will be in Mainz this week. Seb joins together with Matthias Magiera, who will do his MSc study with us later this year, all related to the virtual cave. We also look forward planning the end of this year, when Inken and Cinthya are going to visit Waikato for field and lab work.
Stay tuned!
Long Night of Science in Berlin & Potsdam
Together with students, Norbert has presented our work at the Long Night of Science in Berlin & Potsdam. The exhibition “The Climate Time Machine” at the Potsdam Insitute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) was together with the modellers group of the PIK who presented a palaeoclimate model (analyzing the impact of a cretaceous meteorite impact and the dinosaurs extinction). The second part of the “Climate Time Machine” was on palaeoclimate archives, including lake sediments and stalagmites. The public interest was amazing. Instead of presenting only numbers and computer graphs, the palaeoclimate was for touching as we were presenting real samples of a stalagmite and lake sediments as well as caving equipment.
High interest at the “Climate Time Machine”.
QUEST at EGU 2017
With several poster and oral presentations the QUEST team has presented its work at the general assembly of the European Geoscience Union in Vienna, April 24–28, 2017.
Sebastian explaining the poster “Quantitative Palaeoenvironments from Speleothems (QUEST): magnetic properties of two New Zealand speleothems” at the EGU conference 2017.
Meet QUEST at EGU 2017
We will present our work at the EGU conference in Vienna:
Monday, 24 April
Tuesday, 25 April
- : Quantitative Palaeoenvironments from Speleothems (QUEST): magnetic properties of two New Zealand speleothems
17:30-19:00, Hall X5, Poster session CL1.13 - C. Nehme, S. Verheyden, S. F. M. Breitenbach, D. P. Gillikin, A. Verheyden, H. Cheng, L. Edwards, J. Hellstrom, S. R. Noble, A. R. Farrant, D. Sahy, T. Goovaerts, G. Salem, P. Claeys: Climatic variability during the penultimate interglacial (MIS 7) and glacial (MIS 6) periods recorded in a speleothem from Kanaan cave, Lebanon (Central Levant)
- M. Weber, D. Scholz, J. A. Wassenburg, K. P. Jochum, S. Breitenbach: Application of LA-MC-ICP-MS for analysis of Sr isotope ratios in speleothems
Congratulations to Inken for the poster prize!
Inken Heidke won the “Best Poster Award” of the ANAKON conference in Tübingen (April 3–6, 2017) for her poster “Der Paläo-Vegetation auf der Spur – Analyse von Ligninphenolen in Stalagmiten“. Congratulations!
Inken with her awarded poster.
New forthcoming book on caves in New Zealand
A new book Caves: Exploring New Zealand’s Subterranean Wilderness will be released in July this year. More information and pre-order available at http://whiopublishing.co.nz/
Our study on the equatorial rain belt displacement by analyzing speleothem data now published
Our study on the equatorial rain belt displacement by analyzing data from a stalagmite collected in the Yok Balum Cave, Belize, is now published in Scientific Reports.