Björn Machalett

CL Climate: Past, Present & Future

The 2007 Young Scientist Outstanding Poster Paper (YSOPP) Award is awarded to Björn Machalett for the poster/PICO entitled:

Dynamics of past aeolian dust deposition in Central Asia: a case study from the loess deposits of southeast Kazakhstan (Oches, E.A.; Frechen, M.; Zöller, L.)

Click here to download the poster/PICO file.

Björn is a PhD fellow of the German Federal Environmental Foundation (DBU), working at the University of Bayreuth and the Leibniz Institute of Applied Geosciences, Hannover. The aim of his research, supervised by Prof. L. Zöller and Prof. M. Frechen, is the deduction of Pleistocene atmospheric circulation patterns by studying the past aeolian dust dynamics that are registered in loess sequences of Eurasia. To characterise these dynamics Björn combines highly resolved particle size studies with different geochronological methods. He put a special focus on amino acid geochronology (AAG), which he is carrying out under the supervision of Prof. E.A. Oches at the University of South Florida AAG laboratory. Björn has pointed out that previous discussed circulation models for Eurasia were too simplified and showed that the past aeolian dust record of Eurasia reflects a long-term signal of seasonality, triggered by changes in duration and permanency of the Asiatic polar front.