Kevin Schiele
Education
2013 – present: PhD student, Quaternary Environmental Change research group, Ulster University, Northern Ireland.
2010 – 2013: MSc, (1st class), Geosciences, University of Kiel, Germany.
2007 – 2010: BSc, (1st class), Geosciences, University of Tübingen, Germany.
Background
I am a postgraduate in geosciences investigating the dynamics of the British-Irish Ice Sheet on the Irish continental margin. I have been working in the fields of sedimentary processes, palaeoclimate research and palaeoceanography in Polar regions. During internships and while working as a student assistant I gained experience in laboratory work on sediments and the use of shallow seismic gear. Both of my theses were carried out in cooperation between university and the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research.
My master’s project focused on sedimentary processes along the Svalbard continental margin during the Bølling / Allerød interstadial. A multiproxy approach was carried out including the analysis of published and unpublished data of marine sediment cores. Grain-size analysis, magnetic susceptibility values, physical properties, AMS age determinations, δ18O values and clay mineralogy data of several marine sediment cores were taken into account. The results were presented at the International Polar Congress (see abstract: http://epic.awi.de/32140/).
GLANAM PhD Project
Background: Bordering the North Atlantic, the British-Irish Ice Sheet (BIIS) is known to have been sensitive to climatic and oceanic forcing at a variety of timescales throughout the Quaternary. Whilst our understanding of the behaviour of the BIIS is generally improving, there are still large sectors of this ice sheet for which we have little or no chronological control and for which maximum extent and timing of subsequent retreat are unresolved. This is particularly true for the western Irish shelf onto which recent work suggests the BIIS expanded as far as the shelf edge. Unstudied marine geophysical and geological data are available from the shelf in this area and offer an unprecedented opportunity to resolve these key issues for this sector of the BIIS.
Objective: We propose to develop the first time-constrained reconstruction of the dynamic behaviour of the BIIS on the Irish continental margin. The results will allow temporal offshore-onshore correlation, which will be used to inform and calibrate a numerical model of ice sheet growth and decay for this sector of the BIIS.
Research Methodology: 1) Sedimentological analysis and radiocarbon dating of marine sediment cores from shelf glacial moraines; 2) reconstructing the former ice flow trajectory by synthesising the onshore and offshore landform record into a GIS framework.
