GEOMAR coordinates European research and education project BASE-LiNE Earth
02.03.2015 / Kiel. As the history of the oceans can be reconstructed in the past 500 million based on calcareous shells of fossil marine life, busy to date with the research project BASE-LiNE Earth. At the same time it enables talented young scientists and scientists a doctorate in an international research environment. The European Union supports the at GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel coordinated project with a total of 3.8 million euros.
Almost all life on earth would be extinct - and that at least five times in the past 500 million years. The environmental changes that have each led to the mass extinction, the oceans play an important role in almost all cases. How did it happen that was phased so hostile to life as a life-giving force sea? And why have some species still survive? These are fundamental questions that will be examined in the next three years as part of the European research project BASE-LiNE Earth with innovative technologies and methods. In addition to answering the research questions BASE LiNE Earth serves as the training of talented young scholars and scientists who are recruited by means of a demanding selection process from all over the world and doctorate within the scope of the project.
The EU promotes the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel coordinated project under a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action in Horizon2020-Pogramm with a total of 3.8 million euros. The challenge for the future BASE-LiNE Earth-doctoral students, is to provide information to gain from distant epochs of earth's history. "When historians want to know about events 100 or 200 years ago, they visit libraries or archives where there is written evidence from these times," says project coordinator Prof. Dr. Anton Eisenhauer from GEOMAR. "We also use archives.
However, they see something different. It is, for example, the calcareous shells of fossil brachiopods in which the relevant data on the chemical history of ocean water are stored reliably, "explains the Kiel geochemist on.
The information is in the calcite shells of course not writing before, but encrypted in the chemical and mineralogical composition. "If we precise the ratios of elements such as strontium, magnesium, boron, or measure of the isotopic to each other, we can decrypt the information," says Professor Eisenhauer.
This then the age of the shell, as well as the chemical composition of the previous ocean and prevailing environmental conditions such as water temperature and the acidity of the water can be reconstructed. We know, for example, know that during the greatest mass extinction 251 million years ago, the ocean contained no oxygen and was acidified to a large extent.
"This is similar to some scenarios that we expect for the future of our ocean," explains Professor Eisenhauer. Model calculations are carried out within the framework of the project should show how far the former changes in the environment are transferable to the present day. The challenge is to gain this information and to make it usable. In collaboration with industry partners modern analytical methods for obtaining information in cooperation with business partners in this area in the context of BASE-LiNE Earth therefore be generated and developed. The project involves a total of 21 scientific institutions from eight European countries and partners from Canada, Israel, Palestine and Australia involved. 15 PhD positions will announce the project this spring, two of them for the GEOMAR in Kiel.
The Integrated School of Ocean Sciences (ISOS) provides at the University of Kiel for a comprehensive training program in which the scholars not only pursue their academic goals, but also learn more professional qualifications, skills and interact with each other. In the coming years, the parties want to do their topic also by means of exhibitions and school supplies to a wider audience. "Of course we also bind the doctoral students, which thus also learn to communicate their work understandable," says the project coordinator. For more information on the project website www.baseline-earth.eu.
Source: Geomar
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