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Dr. Holger Kuhlmann

Research Staff

Group: 

Core Repository

Phone: 

+49 421 218-65566

Fax:

+49 421 218-9865566

Email:

Room: 

MARUM 1, 0230

Holger Kuhlmann
 

Current position

IODP Bremen Core Repository (BCR) Superintendent

Responsibilities

Our task at the IODP Bremen Core Repository (BCR) is to store, preserve and manage the collection of over 160 km of deep-sea core material collected over several decades by the DSDP, ODP, and IODP programs, and to provide samples to the scientific community worldwide for diverse research projects. Our collection comprises all sediment and hard-rock cores collected through these programs from the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans and the Mediterranean, Black and Baltic Seas.

Research

My interests focus on land-ocean interactions that are documented in marine sediments. The tropical and subtropical regions of the African Continent are of interest because of their climate sensitivity incorporating important meridional climatic and oceanographic gradients. The intense coastal upwelling off NW Africa plays an important role for climate relevant biogeochemical cycles. Additionally, this region receives high amounts of lithogenic material by aeolian transport. In SE Africa fluvial transport is dominant, e.g off Zambezi River. All these processes results in high sedimentation rates of up to 100 cm/kyr, which allow high resolution analyses of the retrieved archives.

During various expeditions a large pool of sediment cores were retrieved (PANGAEA-database). To investigate all sediment cores I used quick and non-destructive core logging tools. Physical properties (e.g. magnetic susceptibility, lightness) were obtained using the Multi-Sensor Core Logger (MSCL).
From the X-ray fluorescence (XRF) Core Scanner we receive element intensities/concentrations of the climate relevant elements.

The obtained dataset is used for stratigraphic purposes and reconstructions of terrigeneous input and marine productivity contributions to the sediment (e.g. accumulation rates).
Detailed high resolution analyses of millennial cyclicities and abrupt climate changes during the Holocene and last glacial time period were performed.
The achieved age models for the sediment cores additionally build the basis for time slice approaches investigating micropalaeontological and geochemical parameters for a comparison of present conditions with e.g. Younger Dryas, last glacial maximum (LGM). High-resolution Holocene sequences of NW Africa were analyzed to figure out the origin, teleconnections and impact of decadal and millenial cycles on the environment.