Prof. Dr. Jordon Hemingway

Research area

Prof. Hemingway's research focuses on understanding how and why our planet's surface conditions—including atmospheric composition, climate, and ocean redox state—have evolved throughout Earth history. This work is centered around three main pillars:

1. developing novel experimental approaches and isotope tracers to track various carbon-, oxygen-, and sulfur-cycle processes;
2. applying these tracers in modern environments to build a mechanistic understanding of the geologic, climatic, and biologic factors that govern these elemental cycles;
3. reconstructing ancient environments using sedimentary archives to predict how these elemental cycles have changed over various timescales, ranging from the Holocene to the Proterozoic.

Current and past projects have focused on a range of topics such as:

1. how mountain building consumes oxygen and releases carbon dioxide by weathering organic carbon and pyrite minerals,
2. how organo-mineral interactions release oxygen and consume carbon dioxide by preserving organic carbon for long timescales,
3. how climate regulates the residence time of organic matter on landscapes,
4. reconstructing ecological niches and water-column redox states during Mesozoic ocean anoxic events,
5. reconstructing hydrospheric conditions during the Neoproterozoic "Snowball Earth".

Central to all of these projects is the development and application of new isotope methods.