Our projects focus on modern benthic and planktic marine ecosystems, and a better understanding of the formation of fossil assemblages. Analyses of planktic foraminifer production, ecology, and particle fluxes in the water column are targeted towards quantification of the transfer of carbon (e.g., CO2 budget) from the surface to the deep ocean (biological carbon pump). Ecological studies of benthic foraminifer assemblages focus on high-productivity and low-oxygen conditions as, for example, upwelling areas, submarine canyons, eutrophic shelf seas. In those areas we analyse and quantify 1) the flux of organic matter to the sea floor, 2) bottom water oxygenation, 3) redox conditions in surface sediments, and the 4) temporal variability of sea floor environments.
