Projekt

Vegetation history of southern Mongolia under the influence of climate change and human land use

I am a PhD student in the Department of Palynology and Climate Dynamics under the supervision of Dr. Frank Schlütz and Prof. Dr. Hermann Behling. My research work is in the Biodiversity and Ecology PhD programme with focus on palaeoecology and palynology.
The topic of my study is the vegetation history of southern Mongolia under the influence of climate change and human land use during the last 30.000 – 40.000 years. I will do the palynological analyses of several cores taken in lakes of the Gobi desert and adjacent mountains in 2007 and 2008. The research project is focusing on different aspects of the past vegetation of Mongolia to contribute to palaeoecological reconstructions together with other German working groups, who are engaged in research on landscape and climate change with geographical and soil science studies.The leadings scientists of these research groups are Prof. F. Lehmkuhl (RTWH Aachen), Prof. J. Grunert (University of Mainz) and Prof. U. Radtke (University of Cologne). For details see “http://www.uni-mainz.de/FB/Geo/mongopro/.”
My role is also the identification of pollen and spores to create a first identification key to the pollen flora of southern Mongolia. This pollen key will be very useful and fruitful for the pollen analyses of the aforementioned research groups and for other future projects as well. The research work on recent pollen in herbaria and the analyses of the fossil pollen and spores will be carried out almost for 3 years duration and will sum up as my PhD degree at the Albrecht-von-Haller Institute for Plant Sciences at the University of Göttingen, Germany.

Project management:
Dr. Frank Schlütz, Prof. Dr. Hermann Behling

Scientific co-worker:
Waheed Murad (PhD student)

Keywords:
Mongolia, vegetation history, climate change, human landuse, palynology