Research

In general my research agenda is directed towards understanding ecosystem dynamics and climate using large-scale and long duration data sources. I aim my research so that the results of my work are relevant for ongoing discussion about the development of and changes in environments and ecosystems, and to the priorities of society.

My research has been performed largely by analysing mammal communities and their structure in relation to environmental and climate change, both in present day and in deep time (mainly during the Neogene, the last 23 million years). My research topics are carried out at the population, community and ecosystem levels, and spatial analysis is central in all of these. One of my main focus areas is utilizing ecomorphological characters, mainly derived from teeth, of mammals to describe and investigate the past environments and climate. The other main interest lies in understanding animal - vegetation interactions in relation to climate and other physical variables in today's environments, and how this has changed through time.

The ecomorphological characters, or ecometric variables as we call them, can be used to infer e.g. paleo-rainfall, temperature, Net Primary Production, and the structure of vegetation, based on mammal data. My objective is to discover and utilize variables that are easy to measure, simple to implement and can be obtained from both fossil and recent mammal data. These kind of quantitative data can be compared and combined with results from climate and vegetation models or from fossil plants to reach broader understanding of environments, climate and the processes that shape them.

During my master thesis work, I developed together with Prof. Fortelius (University of Helsinki) a new way to visualize the development and dynamics of fossil mammal communities. During my PhD studies I developed new ways to measure and understand mammal community dynamics, at different scales, especially in relation to climate. This involved novel ways to synthesize climate model data, paleogeography and plant evidence together with mammal data. As a Post-Doc I have focused on understanding how climatic processes shape the structure and spatial distribution of mammal communities both in present day and deep time, and how we can combine evidence from different proxy data and modeling.

Recently, I developed for a first time a way to quantitatively estimate precipitation using the dental traits of large herbivorous mammals and showed how we can use tooth morphology to differentiate population-level adaptions caused by regional climate conditions. I have also used climate model data seamlessly together with fossil mammal data to unravel the climatic processes governing the development of fossil assemblages in detail in deep-time. In addition, I have been in the forefront in promoting the use of mammalian traits as environmental proxies, using present-day data for ground-truthing, and applying modern computational methods in their analysis.

At the moment I am involved in projects that aim at running dynamic vegetation models for past time periods (Miocene, Pliocene etc.), species distribution modeling of Pleistocene and Neogene mammals, investigating spatial development of environments of the Northern Hemisphere during the last 23 million years, developing new proxy tools based on mammal data, understanding the herbivore - vegetation interactions and how this can be modeled (in the present and past), investigating trophic level analysis of fossil mammalian data, climate modeling of the last 23 million years, and proxy data comparisons (mammal vs. vegetation data). In addition I am in future chair of the iCCB (integrative Climate Change Biology, 7/2012 onwards), part of the NECLIME and ETE programmes/communities and an Associate Coordinator for the NOW database.

See also my Publications and CV