My research is focused on the transport, mobilisation and accumulation of different elements in forests, wetlands, streams and lakes in the boreal landscape. Key interests are therefore to establish mass-balances for different major and trace elements and to explain what processes control their biogeochemical cycling in the landscape. The basic idea is that by comparing many elements with different biogeochemical properties and sources (and, if possible, their stable or radioactive isotopes) it will be possible to establish links between fundamental chemical properties and large-scale patterns in the landscape.
One central part of the mass-balance of most elements in the boreal landscape is weathering, and I am therefore investigating how we can improve the quantification of weathering and accumulation in soils. Another aspect of the mass-balances is that the landscape has developed during the Holocene, partly as a result of historical climate change, and another area of interest is therefore to understand to what extent the water quaility and the mass-fluxes we observe today are a result of events that took place during earlier stages of the Holocene.
Here are some elements that I find particularly interesting:
uranium, thorium, radium, selenium, silicon, iron, molybdenum, lanthanides in general, but in particular europium and cerium, potassium, rubidium, chlorine, nickel, barium, caesium, calcium ... to be continued ...
