Increasing human interaction with nature and extensive exploitation of natural resources often lead to environmental conflicts and may cause severe environmental deterioration. Most people support the concept of sustainable development - but how should we work towards this in practice?
- How do fresh water systems and coastal waters react to increased loading of nutrients and contaminants?
- How do we know if the ecological status of coastal waters has changed if biological and instrumental time series are lacking?
- How can we utilize our groundwater resources, and how can the water quality be protected against pollution?
- What kind of remediation or mitigation measures can be applied? Groundwater utilization is the limiting factor for human existence in many parts of the world, but over-exploitation and pollution represent serious threats for the future.
The Department of Geosciences has a broad research profile in groundwater flow, contaminant transport and remediation, based on laboratory and field experiments as well as computer simulations. Increasingly, scientists are expected to interpret and predict the human impact on the environment such as pollution and eutrophication of coastal waters, rivers, and lakes. Such studies are often based on inadequate previous baseline information with little environmental data prior to the impact of concern.
Environmental stratigraphy offers one of the few methods to compensate for this by using microfossils and associated geochemical characteristics in dated sediment cores as indicators of environmental change through time. The research is based on field work, laboratory experiments and comparison with numerical model data.
The Department is one of few academic institutions offering environmental micropaleontology in its study programme portefolio.