News and activities

February 2016: Initial field work in New Providence and Andros Island on Quaternary carbonates. Photo shows large-scale cross-bedding in Holocene carbonate sand dune in New Providence.

January 2016: Reconnaissance for deep drilling at Kinnekulle. Proposed drill site at Högkullen.

August 2015: Deep coring through Silurian strata on Gotland, in collaboration with University of Iowa, and by means of new LU infrastructure Riksriggen. More info in Swedish. The crew!

Broadcasted on Swedish Radio P4 

Coverage by Gotland Allehanda

June 2015: Completing carbon isotope sampling campaign in Oslo region. Sitting on the Ordovician-Silurian boundary.

May 2015: Reconnaissance trip to Gotland to prepare for deep drilling. Studying Silurian reef limestone at Högklint.

June 2014: Field work and experience tour to classical Silurian localities of England and Wales.

May and August 2014: Field work in the Oslo-Asker district of southern Norway. Studying the Norwegian stratotype for the Ordovician-Silurian boundary, where the stratigraphy is upside-down!

June 2013: Chair of the IGCP 591 annual meeting in Lund. Regional excursion with one at the first stops at Rövarekulan locality to discuss Silurian shale fill of the Colonus Shale Trough. Field trip guide book to Palaeozoic outcrops of southern Sweden and Norway available here.

I am a specialist in sedimentary geology, sequence stratigraphy, and palaeoecology, and utilise fossil sediments and geochemistry to study the interplay of global change in climate, sea-level and biodiversity (minor and mass extinctions).

I work in particular with the Lower Palaeozoic sedimentary cover of the Baltic Shield with comparison to remote basins, in particular in North America and the South China Plate. Main lines of research concentrates on time intervals of major global change, in particular the Global Ordovician Biodiversity Event (GOBE), the end-Ordovician glaciation and mass extinction, and the series of minor extinction events in the Silurian. I have particular interest in the environmental drivers during these events.   

In carbonate sedimentology I focus on the the anatomy and mineralogy of recent and sub-recent ooids in the Bahamas complex and utilize synchrotron light FE-SEM and LA-ICP-MS to characterize the microworld and geochemistry of ooids. This project also aims to reveal the oceanographic and ecological significance of widespread calcareous oolites that developed in the aftermath of some of the mass extinctions in Earth history.

My teaching focuses on sedimentary processes and products on wide spatial and temporal scales – from river systems and deserts in the continental interiors to the pelagic rain in the deep ocean, and from the Precambrian to the recent. Students learn to identify ancient depositional environments through facies analysis and also to study how these systems evolved through time by means of sequence stratigraphy – in carbonate as well as clastic or mixed basins. Since my research background mainly is within carbonate rocks, palaeoecology and palaeontology is a natural and well integrated part of my teaching. Most of my exercises and field excursions are based on either the 'old' marine Cambro-Devonian Baltoscandian basin of south-eastern Scandinavia or the Swedish segment of the 'young' marine-continental Mesozoic Danish basin to the southwest. In the core laboratory in the basement of our department I have assembled a few hundreds of metres of Palaeozoic intracratonic stratigraphy. These cores are regularly used in my teaching for two reasons. It gives the students frequent opportunities to study 'the real thing', as a complement to field excursions, and a 'first-row-insight' into my research about the marine environment, climate change and extinction events during the Palaeozoic.