Samuel Hollowood

I am a DPhil Student in Environmental Research, funded by the Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC). My research interests are the application of proxies, models and experimental data to recontruct paleoclimate from freshwater carbonates (e.g. speleothems).

As part of the Environmental Proxies in Karst (EPIK) research group, my thesis focuses on paleoclimate reconstruction projects from speleothem material in Morocco, Algeria and Southern Chile. 

Proxies

I am using stable C, O, novel Ca isotopes, radiocarbon (14C) and trace elements (X/Ca) to reconstruct past rainfall, soil and vegetation dynamics from North Africa (during `Green Sahara' periods) and southern Chile (over the course of the Holocene).

Modelling 

I am developing a new update of CaveCalc (CaveCalcV2.0: https://github.com/Samhollowood/CaveCalcV2.0), a forward-model for speleothem and dripwater chemistry, to convert raw proxy data into quantitative estimates of past rainfall, soil pCO₂, and vegetation coverage. This update will be applied to speleothem material from North Africa and southern Chile

Experiments

The EPIK research group has a Cave lab, in which speleothems are grown in cave-analogue conditions. This helps us better understand the fractionation and partitioning processes of isotopes and elements into speleothem carbonate, aiding paleoclimate reconstructions.