Svante Björck

Svante Björck´s research deals with several different aspects of Quaternary Geology in different parts of the world. Paleoclimatic development of the last glacial cycle is studied in the Atlantic region, especially on islands, from Greenland to Antarctica. Special attention is focused on distinct climatic events, their exact timing, possible underlying processes, and how they are expressed in terms of environmental impact. Study areas are southern and eastern Greenland, Iceland, Faroe Islands, southern Scandinavia, The Azores, Grenada, the Tristan da Cunha island group, Isla de los Estados in eastern Tierra del Fuego, Subantarctic islands and the Antarctic Peninsula. Lately Björck has also field worked on Ile Amsterdam in the southern Indian Ocean in cooperation with French and Belgian colleagues. Mainly lacustrine, terrestrial and glacial deposits are used as archives, with analyses of a wide variety of paleoclimatic variables, and with a high-resolution strategy. At one site in the Tristan da Cunha archipelago, 1st Pond on Nightingale Island, the deposits span the last 37 kyr. One special aim is to map, in time and space, climatic events in the two hemispheres to understand climate couplings between these, and how far north in the southern hemisphere the bipolar seesaw climate effects can be seen. Björck has also always been fascinated by interactions between sea level changes and glacial isostasy; in south Greenland and Scandinavia, one of his special interests is the complex Late Quaternary history of the Baltic Sea, and lately also in Tierra del Fuego. At the moment Björck tries to construct the first precise and well-dated postglacial sea level curve for the Beagle Channel, southernmost Chile.

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