Faglige nøgleord: Greenland Ice Sheet, Optically Stimulated Luminescence Dating, Climate Change
Oplæg tilgængeligt på: Engelsk
I would like to introduce myself, to present my academic and professional path, and share some experiences that everyone has when going from high school to university, especially abroad. This presentation has a key concept that can be summarized in the following phrase: "Past dynamics guide future prediction," or more poetically, "The key to the future is hidden in the past." Thus, as a geologist, I will introduce how we can decipher the past of the Earth from the geological record, especially in the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS), using a very special technique known as Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL). Hence, my presentation can be outlined as follows:
Introduction: from high school to university and from university to the real world.
The Geological record: How can we read the past of the Earth from its archives?
The GrIS as a fundamental record of the recent past of the Earth.
Why is it important to understand how the GrIS is responding to climate change and what the potential effects of those responses could be for our societies?
What is OSL, and how can we use it to know when Greenland was last ice-free?
There will be a quiz based on the presentation to participate with the students and conclude the presentation.
As a note: OSL is a phenomenon in which minerals like grains of sand can store energy from natural radiation in their surroundings and later release it as light when they are stimulated. In simple terms, these minerals act like natural clocks of the Earth, allowing us to “read” when they were last exposed to sunlight and uncover events from thousands of years ago.
Answering the questions above:
1. My research area focuses on using Stimulated Luminescence phenomena to date sedimentary deposits and unravel Earth Surface processes. Particularly, understanding the evolution of the Greenland Ice Sheet.
2. My research is relevant to society to the extent of providing the fundamental information on which Ice Sheet modelling lies to predict future responses of the Greenland Ice Sheet to climate change and how those responses could affect our societies. This fits in the SDGs related to the planet pillar of sustainable development.
3. I became a PhD student at DTU after applying to a position in the Luminescence Physics section of the Physics department of DTU in 2024. When I finished high school at 16 years old, I decided to start a bachelor's degree in Geology in my home country (Colombia), then after 5 years, I finished it in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020), and I worked as a consultant for gas exploration in field surveys. Then, in 2022, I moved to São Paulo, Brazil, to do a Master's Degree of two years of research in OSL applied to tectonics, where I was granted to do research abroad in DTU Risø, and I met my actual supervisor.