Vera Markgraf

  • Research Professor Emerita
  • GEOGRAPHY

Paleoclimates of South America & Southern Hemisphere • Hemispheric paleoclimate correlations

High resolution, multi-proxy paleoclimate analysis, using pollen (vegetation history), charcoal (fire history), and stable isotopes (temperature history) from late-Quaternary lake and bog sediments in southern South America, in collaboration with J. W. C. White (INSTAAR), E. Pendall (U. Wyoming) and INSTAAR graduate students.

Late Quaternary palynology primarily in southern South America and other land areas in the southern hemisphere with focus on reconstruction of past climate, dynamics and forcing of climate change, especially during times of transition, such as the late glacial. Development of national and international research initiative PEP 1 (Paleoclimates Pole-Equator-Pole in the Americas) in context of PAGES-IGCP.

International cooperative research: Patagonian Lake Drilling Project (PATO), focusing on recovery and multi-proxy analysis of sediment cores from large, extra-Andean lakes. Editor of volume Interhemispheric Climate Linkages, published in 2000 by Academic Press, representing the outcome of the "Pole-Equator-Pole Paleoclimates of the Americas" (PEP 1) IGBP-PAGES research initiative, that I previously chaired. Co-editor with H.F. Diaz of the volume El Niño and the Southern Oscillation: Multiscale Variability and Global and Regional Impacts, published in 2001 by Cambridge University Press.

Education

  • PhD: Bern, Switzerland, 1968

Awards

  • Distinguished Career Award, American Quaternary Association, 2020
  • Honorary Doctorate, University of Bern, 2008

Example publications

For additional publications, see .

Cusminsky, G., Coviaga, C., Ramos, L., Perez, A. P., Schwalb, A., Vera Markgraf, Ariztegui, D., Viehberg, F., Alperin, M. 2020: . Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciencias, 92(2): e20190459. DOI: 10.1590/0001-3765202020190459

Coviaga, C., Cusminsky, G., Patricia Perez, A., Schwalb, A., Vera Markgraf, Ariztegui, D. 2018: . Holocene, 28(12): 1881-1893. DOI: 10.1177/0959683618798131

Iglesias, V., Vera Markgraf, Whitlock, C. 2016: . Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 457: 195-208. DOI: 10.1016/j.palaeo.2016.06.008

Iglesias, V., Whitlock, C., Vera Markgraf, Bianchi, M. M. 2014: . Quaternary Science Reviews, 94: 120-135. DOI: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2014.04.014

Vera Markgraf, Iglesias, V., Whitlock, C. 2013: . Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 371: 109-118. DOI: 10.1016/j.palaeo.2012.12.023