I am an Earth Scientist whose research aims to better understand the interactions and feedbacks between the tectonic, climatic, anthropogenic, and biological processes that shape topography. My research bridges erosional landscapes, their detrital products, and resulting stratigraphy in a source-to-sink perspective that links active processes to the sedimentary record. The diversity of my research requires an interdisciplinary approach, where I combine field studies with analytical methods (cosmogenic nuclides, luminescence, radiocarbon dating, etc.) and numerical modelling. On this homepage I listed a few projects I am currently working on and plan to work on in the future.
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News
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NEW Assistant Professor at University of Amsterdam
10/2023 Things have gotten a bit quieter since I am currently on an extended parental leave. Nevertheless I am happy to announce that I have taken a position as Assistant Professor in Tropical Landscape Evolution and Geomorphology at the University of Amsterdam. I will be joining the Department of Ecosystem & Landscape Dynamics and am excited about the opportunity of building many new collaborations with ecologists. How do carbonate landscapes evolve? 03/2023 After a stressful and long review process, I am proud to present a global compilation of carbonate denudation rates from cosmogenic nuclides. We're using the denudation rates in conjunction with weathering rates to show that carbonates topography is super sensitive to climate and tectonic forcing compared to silicic rocks. So, if you want to study tectonic-climate interactions, you might want to look into studying modern (or ancient) carbonate regions ;-) Why do rivers aggrade or incise? 10/2022 Our recent paper in ESPL investigates the controls on river aggradation and incision. In simple terms, a river aggrades either when the sediment input from the hillslopes increases, or when there's less water to transport material. But which of the two is it? To find out more, we investigated fluvial deposits from the last 100'000 years on Crete by mapping them, dating them, and calculating paleo-denudation rates. We found that despite major shifts in climate, the sediment supply from the hillslopes barely changed. However, hydroclimate showed major changes suggesting that river discharge was the main factor controlling aggradation and incision. Colombia-Germany collaboration workshop 09/2022 I am part of a German-Colombian collaboration project. Within this project, we're having a workshop in Bogota to plan joint research projects. After the workshop, I'll conduct 2 weeks of field work in the Eastern and Central Cordillera of Colombia. Yay!!! Together with my collaborators I'll try to quantify the rise of the northern Andes, interactions of tectonics and climate, and how exactly the rise of the Andes is encoded in the modern distribution of species we observe. New cosmogenic nuclide codes available! 05/2022 I've released two codes, one to calculate denudation rates and long-term weathering rates from cosmogenic nuclide measurements in areas of non-negligible weathering named "WeCode", and a second to calculate postburial nuclide production for complex burial named "PostPro". Check out the code and resources section for more details ;-) New papers from Elena Bruni and Nicolas-Perez Consuegra! 09/2021 I had the privilege to co-supervise both students and help with their projects. Elena's paper is about river terrace and alluvial fan aggradation and incision. Typically, we assume that cycles of aggradation and incision in sedimentary systems on time-scales shorter than a million years are related to changes in climate. However, Elena shows a beautiful field example of how changes between aggradation and incision can be due to purely stochastic events such as landslides, earthquake sediment mobilization, or big storms. Nicolas' paper investigates the topography of the Northern Andes, and shows how the topography records a signal of deep subduction processes. We show how flattening of the slab in the Nazca subduction zone induced rapid uplift of the northernmost Andes, diverted large river systems and sediment routing, and potentially boosted regional biodiversity by isolating former lowland species on "sky islands". Also check out Emma Lodes beautiful illustrations for both projects on the Science Art tab. Talk at FU Berlin about earthquake hazard and tectonics of the Eastern Mediterranean 04/2021 FU Berlin invited me to talk about some of the work I've done in my PhD covering the seismic and tsunami hazard in the Hellenic Subduction Zone and tying it to longterm tectonics. Thanks for all the participants for a great discussion afterwards. You can watch the talk HERE. Talk at Frontiers of Karst Colloquium 03/2021 I had the pleasure to give a talk at the Frontiers of Karst Colloquium talking about how we can cosmogenic radionuclides to quantify denudation processes. The talk covers how we can use our compiled data of carbonate denudation to come up with a conceptual model of carbonate topography for different climate zones and tectonic activity. Watch the talk HERE. NAGRA Project - Determine carbonate denudation rates for the longterm storage of nuclear waste 01/2021 I am starting a cooperation with NAGRA, the Swiss cooperation for the storage of nuclear waste. I will work together with scientists from NAGRA to find ways of quantifying carbonate denudation rates in northern Switzerland with cosmogenic nuclides. This will be an exciting and interesting project because 20% of the world are covered by carbonates and we currently still lack ways of reliably quantifying denudation rates in these regions. MICCON - Minoan Impact on Crete from Cosmogenic Nuclides 10/2020 Just received funding for a cool little project I'm working on. The question we'll try to answer is, what is the landscape response to human landuse with deforestation and grazing practices. And did the first advanced civilization of Europe, the Minoans, cause their own demise by deforestation and excessive landuse. SNF Postdoctoral Research Fellow 01/2020 Since, today I'm officially a postdoctoral researcher at GFZ Potsdam. I will work on the uplift of the Northern Andes of Colombia and how this links to earthquake hazards and biodiversity in the region. (check out the research section). I'm excited to work in this amazing country! |