The project “Northern Polish Lake Research” (NORPOLAR) is a Polish-German joint research program based on a bilateral cooperation between the Department of Geomorphology and Quaternary Geology (Institute of Geography, University of Gdańsk) and GEOPOLAR (Institute of Geography, University of Bremen).
In this framework, interdisciplinary research on annually laminated sediments at four lake sites in Northern Poland has been carried out, aiming at:
(1) establishing absolute and multiple-dated chronologies for all four records,
(2) linking paleodata with instrumental and monitoring data to improve our understanding of pathways from forcing factors via processes to proxy records,
(3) providing high-resolution data sets of paleoredox conditions, paleoproductivity, lake water balance, lacustrine carbon cycling and soil erosion, and
(4) providing regional data sets of reconstructed climate parameters to be used in combination with the output of downscaled or regional climate models.
Within NORPOLAR we also address one of the major aims of the former ESF-funded European Lake Drilling Programme (ELDP), i.e., to analyze past climate and environmental variability along transects throughout Europe. The NORPOLAR lakes are located along a W-E transect covering the entire latitudinal extension of Poland from 15 to 23°E (Fig. 1) with a distinct maritime to continental climatic trend, i.e., a decrease in mean annual temperature from 8.5 to 6.0°C from West to East.
This NORPOLAR Workshop was organized by Wojciech Tylmann and Małgorzata Kinder. It teamed 23 participants from Poland, Germany and Switzerland.
The aims of this workshop were twofold: (1) To familiarize all project participants with the up-to-date state of scientific results, and (2) To develop a strategy for future research activities.