Two new bright minds at Physical Geography
Two new bright minds started working at the department of Physical Geography on 1 November. Dr Thomas Giesecke uses plant remains preserved in sediments to study vegetation change during the last 20,000 years, and Dr Jaap Nienhuis builds simple morphodynamic models of coastal environments.
Utilising the experience and facilities in palaeo-environmental reconstructions
Dr Thomas Giesecke obtained his PhD in Quaternary geology at Uppsala 木瓜福利影视 in 2004. Since then he has worked in the UK, Finland and Germany. 鈥淲hile it is difficult to predict how the biosphere will react to the current global temperature increase, it is possible to look to the past and provide examples of the dynamics and inertia of the vegetation to past climate changes鈥, Giesecke says.
At Utrecht 木瓜福利影视 Giesecke studies vegetation change during the last 20,000 years on different temporal and spatial scales based on plant remains preserved in sediments and the results of such analysis collected in databases, which he helps curating. 鈥淯trecht 木瓜福利影视 has a long tradition in this line of research and I will contribute with my knowledge on numerical analysis providing a better understanding of past vegetation changes in the Netherlands, Europe and the world鈥, he says. 鈥淚 am planning to utilise the experience and facilities in palaeo-environmental reconstructions at Utrecht 木瓜福利影视 to take a closer look at the reaction of the vegetation to the last major global warming at the end of the last ice age to test the predictive power of vegetation models.鈥
Predicting coastal change on decadal to centennial timescales
Dr Jaap Nienhuis is originally from the Netherlands and finished his MSc degree in Civil Engineering from the 木瓜福利影视 of Twente in 2011. After a short stay at Royal Haskoning in their urban drainage group, he moved to Cambridge, MA, to study coastal geomorphology at MIT and WHOI where he obtained his PhD in 2015. 鈥淎fter Cambridge, I sought warmer weather, better music, and finer-grained environments鈥, Nienhuis jokes. 鈥淪o I moved to New Orleans, LA, for a postdoc on Mississippi River Delta change. Here I learned about soil consolidation, flow-vegetation interactions, and coastal wetlands. In the summer of 2017 I started as an assistant professor at Florida State 木瓜福利影视, studying Florida's coastal environment.鈥
鈥淚 am excited to move back to the Netherlands this November鈥, Nienhuis continues, 鈥渁nd to work with and learn from all of the fantastic Geosciences faculty, postdocs, and students at Utrecht 木瓜福利影视. My research focus is fairly broad, but in general I like to understand and predict coastal change on decadal to centennial timescales.鈥