[Aqualist] Studentship, University of Canterbury

[Tim Barrows]

From: James Shulmeister <James.Shulmeister at canterbury.ac.nz>

PhD or MSc project/s in
'High-resolution climate histories from laminated 
lake sediments (Auckland Maar lakes, New Zealand)'.

Supervisors: Dr James Shulmeister and Dr David Nobes
University of Canterbury, New Zealand.

New Zealand is in a key location for the 
understanding of global climate systems. It lies 
in the Southern Hemisphere (SH) westerly zone 
which acts as the key conductor of climate 
signals linking tropical and polar (Antarctic) 
systems. In this context, recent work has 
demonstrated that the Auckland maar lakes contain 
some of the finest paleoclimate records from the 
SH. The Marsden funded project described here 
will focus on extracting high-resolution records 
of abrupt climatic changes and signals of climate 
variability (e.g., El Niño) for the last 50,000 
years and will contribute to understanding global 
climate systems and climate change impacts in New Zealand.
The work is a collaboration between Canterbury 
and Auckland Universities (NZ), The Institute of 
Geological and Nuclear Sciences (NZ) and overseas 
collaborators from the UK and Germany. The 
Canterbury component of the work focuses on 
deciphering climate histories from the spectral 
analyses of laminated lake sediments. Pilot work 
has demonstrated the potential for this research (Pepper et al., 2004).
The project will involve field work collecting 
cores from Auckland maar lakes and substantial 
laboratory work scanning and analysing core 
material. The candidate/s will be involved in 
reconstructing climate histories from these 
records using spectral analyses and other 
techniques. Strong computing and statistical 
skills would be an advantage.  The field and 
laboratory component of this work is well 
supported and the student/s will be working as 
part of a larger inter-disciplinary research team 
including tephrochronologists, 
micropaleontologists, stable isotope geochemists and paleoclimatologists.
We are looking for an outstanding graduate 
student/s to undertake this work. The application 
closing date is May 30th 2006 with a provisional 
start date of September 1st 2006 (negotiable). 
Ideally we would like to attract a student to 
undertake a PhD project. In this case, the 
student must have a first class undergraduate or 
MSc degree to compete for a University of 
Canterbury PhD or NZDIR scholarship. 
Alternatively, we may offer two MSc scholarships, 
one of which would include an NZ domestic fees scholarship.

Please contact Dr James Shulmeister 
(James.Shulmeister at canterbury.ac.nz) for further information.

Pepper, A.C., Shulmeister, J., Nobes. D.C. and 
P.C. Augustinus.  2004. Possible ENSO signals 
prior to the last Glacial Maximum, during the 
deglaciation and the early Holocene from New 
Zealand. Geophysical Research Letters. 31:L15206. doi 10.1029/ 2004GL020236