Seminar, Desember 7th - Sara Harðardóttir

Sara Harðardóttir
© Underground Channel, Frederik Wolff

Sara Harðardóttir, phycologist PhD, at Hafrannsóknastofnun will host this weeks seminar. Sara will talk about her research using DNA from microalgae as proxies for past climate studies.

Time: 12:30-13:00, 7th of December 2023
Place: Meeting hall in Fornubúðir 5, Hafnarfjörður
Stream: Live through MFRI's YouTube channel
Lecturer's language: English

Using DNA from microalgae as proxies for past climate studies

As we move towards “blue summers” in the Arctic Ocean, predicting the full range of effects of climate change on the marine arctic environment, remains a challenge.

Much of our knowledge on past ocean variability derives from microfossil and biogeochemical tracers which all have considerable limitations such as preservation biases and low taxonomic resolution or coverage.

A key component of the Arctic is sea ice, but sea ice is poorly understood particularly prior to the satellite era, and there is a significant gap in our understanding of sea-ice variability on geological timescales.

Sea ice harbours a vast biodiversity of sea-ice microalgae with fine-tuned evolutionary traits. Recent studies show that DNA can be preserved in marine sediments for up to one million years. Tracing sea ice by DNA fingerprints from microalgae might advance our understanding of the climate, for past and future projections.

In this seminar will Sara present the potential of ancient DNA from sea ice microalgae Polarella glacialis (dinoflagellate) and Haslea spicula (diatom) as a sea-ice proxies.

About Sara

Sara joined the MFRI as a specialist in marine phytoplankton in 2022. She has for over a decade studied phytoplankton and sea-ice algae in Arctic marine ecosystems, mostly around Greenland and the Canadian Arctic.

Sara's main research interests are phytoplankton dynamics in a changing world, harmful algae, and the effect of climate change on marine life in Arctic and sub-Arctic regions.

For the study presented in this seminar Sara obtained two international grants for her post-doctoral research: Marie Skłodowska-Curie individual postdoctoral global fellowship (European Union Horizon 2020), and The Sentinel North, from the Canada First Research First Excellence Fund.

Education:

Ph.d in Evolutionary Genomics, Faculty of Science. University of Copenhagen (2014-2017)
MSc Engineer of Aquatic sciences. DTU Aqua. Technical University of Denmark (2009-2012)

An interesting news item from Horizon (April 27th 2023)about Sara's research:
From Arctic to Alps, icy exploration expands understanding of global warming | Research and Innovation (europa.eu)