My research interests involve studies of Cenozoic and Cretaceous paleoenvironments and paleoclimates of the southern high latitudes and Antarctic continent. Marine diatoms and other siliceous microfossils provide essential biostratigraphic age control and record paleoenvironmental changes of climate and marine productivity, which reflect large-scale changes in the Antarctic ice sheet, sea-ice and paleoceanographic conditions in the Southern Ocean. The ANtarctic DRILLing (ANDRILL) Program is an international collaborative effort with the aim to recover stratigraphic records of variation in the extent and influence of the ice sheet around the Antarctic margin by deep drilling from floating ice platforms (http://www.andrill.org. The ANDRILL Science Management Office at UNL is the center of international and U.S. science efforts to better understand the history of past ice sheet behavior as a guide to future ice sheet response to elevated global temperatures. Opportunities for graduate student and post-doctoral research in ANDRILL, SHALDRIL and IODP are available in my research group, as well as glacial geological research in the Transantarctic Mountains. Our efforts to reconstruct Neogene paleoenvironments and paleocommunities from Cenozoic terrestrial and marine fossil-bearing strata yield information on how life in Antarctica adapted to progressive cooling during the repeated advance and retreat of ice sheets. Another research focus of mine centers on the origin and early evolutionary history of diatoms and silicoflagellates from Cretaceous and Paleogene deposits. Courses I teach emphasize exposure to field geology and laboratory skills in stratigraphy, micropaleontology and field geology.
Selected Publications
- Hambrey, M.J., Webb, P.-N., Harwood, D.M., and Krissek, L.A., 2003, Neogene glacial record from the Sirius Group of the Shackleton Glacier region, central Transantarctic Mountains, Antarctica, Geological Society of America Bulletin, 115, 994-1015.
- Whitehead, J.M., Harwood, D.M., and McMinn, A., 2003, Ice-distal Late Miocene marine strata from inland Antarctica, Sedimentology, 50, 531-552.
- Harwood, D.M. and Bohaty, S.M., 2001, Lower Oligocene siliceous microfossil biostratigraphy of Cape Roberts Project Core CRP-3. Victoria Land Basin, Antarctica, in Studies from the Cape Roberts Project, Ross Sea, Antarctica, Scientific Report of CRP-3 (edited by Barrett, P.J. and Ricci, C.A. (eds.)), 315-328.
- Nikolaev, V.A. and Harwood, D.M., 2001, Diverstiy and classification of centric diatoms, in Proceedings of the 16th International Diatom Symposium,Greece, 2000 (edited by Economou-Amilli, A. (ed.)), 127-152.