Below is a short introduction to people working in BACE research group; their background and their fascination of the Arctic.
BACE research group. From left: Johan, Bjarne, Torben, Lise Lotte, Marcin, Efren, Maria, Marie and Mikhail. Missing persons on this photo: Kirstine, Dorte and Junqi.
I have a master in Biology from University of Copenhagen, where I was studying the seasonal variation in an High Arctic ecosystem at Zackenberg. During my Ph.D I mainly worked with belowground plant dynamics in a changing climate, and have since then worked several years as a Post doc. The main focus has been within plant root ecology and belowground root carbon in different ecosystems in Denmark, Greenland and Svalbard. I now work as a research coordinator, where I have the chance to be involved in the coordination of several projects, programmes and networks within my favorite ecosystem: the Arctic.
Christensen, Torben Røjle (Professor)
I consider myself an experienced researcher and teacher in climate change and arctic environmental issues. My research focuses on Arctic ecosystem ecology and trace gas biogeochemistry with special attention to carbon dioxide and methane exchange in northern terrestrial environments. I hold a PhD from the University of Cambridge and has carried out extensive research in Greenland, Alaska, Svalbard, Siberia and northern Sweden. I am currently the Scientific Leader of the Greenland Ecosystem Monitoring program and I have coordinated several international research projects including EU funded consortia and a Nordic Center of Excellence. I have therefore considerable experience in research project management but my heart lies with hands on doing field and laboratory research work on ecosystem climate interactions in situ in the Arctic.
I consider myself a highly motivated and enthusiastic researcher interested in the responses of the carbon cycle to the ongoing changes in the climate at Arctic ecosystems. I hold a joint Ph.D both from Aarhus University and the University of Edinburgh where I’ve focused on terrestrial CO2 exchange interactions. During these three years I got involved with the GeoBasis monitoring program contributing to extensive fieldwork campaigns in two of the most eye-catching ecosystem stations I’ve ever been: Kobbefjord in West Greenland and Zackenberg in East Greenland. I am currently a postdoc at the BACE lab working in close collaboration with the Greenland Ecosystem Monitoring program following up some of the open questions left in my PhD thesis. Although my research experience involves process-based and data assimilation modelling, I also like to get hands dirty in the field to get a richer picture about the underlying processes shaping the Arctic environments.
I'm a physicist specializing in the field of physical geography with many years of experience from several scientific institutions focusing on various aspects of the interdisciplinary academic field called environmental science. My expertise is an application and development of verity micro- and macro scale instrumental methods for studding biosphere - atmosphere interactions. I'm also interested in applications of various UAV platforms to study geomorphology, snow, hydrology and ecosystem processes. My journey with BACE research group started in August 2016. Since then I’m involved in all GeoBasis Zackenberg monitoring program operations as well as I’m responsible for implementing ICOS instructions @Zackenberg fen site in order to make sure it will become The Northern Most ICOS Class 2 Ecosystem Station GL-ZaF.
I’m bachelor of process technology (non-academic degree) and have followed courses in micrometeorology and geophysics at Indiana University. I have had four educational sabbaticals in USA, Sweden and Switzerland. All sabbaticals in order to improve my field work skills. I have been working as a ‘atmospheric’ research technician for more than 30 years with experimental work carried out around the world at sea, in coastal areas, in the snow pack, at the sea ice and on land, all in remote areas and/or in cities. The main part of my work has been focused on development of instruments for measuring NH3, on development of measurement platforms, on measurements of wind components, particles, CO2/CH4, and NH3, but also other gases like NOX, SO2, CO and O3. Furthermore I’m also involved in teaching Arctic courses in collaboration with Greenland Institute of Natural resources in Nuuk. To date I have had more than 50 ‘Arctic’ visits at Station Nord and Daneborg/Zackenberg both North Greenland, in Nuuk and in Barrow, Alaska.
I see myself as a wide-profile researcher, studying Mother Nature by means of direct field measurements and lab experiments. I hold a Ph.D in biology from Moscow University and a Ph.D in physical geography and ecosystem analysis from Lund University. For more than a decade my main research focus is Arctic, and I am involved in the Greenland Ecosystem Monitoring program (GeoBasis Zackenberg since 2005 and in GeoBasis Nuuk since 2007), and my main research interest is ecosystem-atmosphere interactions. With these studies I am a member of Arctic Research Centre . Recently I became involved in ecosystem research projects in Finland (University of Oulu, Oulanka field station) and Norway (NIBIO).
I have an MSc in Geography and Geo-informatics from the University of Copenhagen, with specialization and main interest in Remote sensing and GIS. My master’s thesis focused on the utilization of the cloud-based Google Earth Engine platform for land cover classification of selected parts of Greenland. I have been involved with the GeoBasis monitoring program since 2015, in both Nuuk and Zackenberg. Working as a field assistant during the summer months has sparked my fascination with the Arctic ecosystem. Since May 2020, I have been working full-time for GeoBasis Zackenberg as an academic employee, being involved with fieldwork, data validation, and improvements of the monitoring aspects. It is a privilege to be able to work with data from the raw collection in the field to the final validated product.
I have worked with climate change and environmental issues for more than 25 years and the last 10 years the focus has been mainly Arctic. I hold a PhD in atmospheric science from the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen. I study the air-sea exchange of gases, particles and energy and this has been my particular research focus since (and during) my PhD in 1997. Most of my research is experimental and carried out at sea, or from coastal stations in Greenland, and due to this I have spent many months at sea, on platforms or at remote coastal stations. I am currently the PI on the pending ICOS atmospheric station at Villum Research Station, Station Nord and hope soon to implement the first Arctic ICOS marine station in the ICOS network. Additionally to being a researcher, I am also the education coordinator at The Arctic Research Centre developing and implementing Arctic courses in Greenland in a collaboration between Aarhus University and Greenland Institute of Natural resources.
In 2018 I graduated the international Erasmus Mundus funded Master of Marine Biodiversity and Conservation, which included excellent scientific opportunities at Universidade do Algarve, Sorbonne and Universiteit Gent. This included an internship at Marum Bremen, an employment as scientific assistant at the MPI for Marine Microbiology Bremen, working on ancient deep-sea RNA and a participation with the R/V Polarstern to the Fram Strait for my Master thesis. My research semester focused on transcriptomic analysis of thermally stressed Arctic zooplankton.
After being captivated by the Arctic realm, my current position in this group as a Ph.D student connects the focus on the Arctic with using molecular tools in Arctic soils. Furthermore I support the social media management of Greenland Ecosystem Monitoring.
I have more than 10 years of experience working with sea ice biogeochemistry in Greenland. I hold a joint Ph.D from both University of Southern Denmark and Greenland Institute of Natural Resources where I´ve focused on biological, chemical and physical processes related to sea ice formation and melt and how these processes affects atmosphere and ocean exchange of carbon dioxide. I am also working as an education coordinator at the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources developing and implementing master courses dedicated to Arctic issues. The courses is offered in Nuuk in collaboration between Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, Aarhus University and University of Copenhagen. Dorte can be contacted at: DoSo@natur.gl
