Sonja Rigterink
PhD Student
Sonja Rigterink is a doctoral student at the Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany, with a scholarship of the "SANDWICH program" from the University of Haifa. Her research interests are focused on paleoecological issues, especially the reconstruction of climate and environmental dynamics from the mid-Pleistocene to the Holocene using combined multi-proxy paleolimnological methods. Specifically, she focuses on the ecology and taxonomy of chironomid larvae remains stored in lake sediments of the Holarctic region.
Sonja graduated from TU Braunschweig in 2018 with a BSc in Geoecology and completed her MSc in Environmental Sciences in 2020. In her Bachelor´s and Master´s projects, she used sub-fossil chironomid larvae stored in sediment cores from saline lakes of the Tibetan Plateau, to examine hydrological fluctuations due to precipitation regime changes during the last 300 years.
Current research
The chironomid record of Lake Hula: insights into Pleistocene hydro-climate variability in the Levantine corridor
Sonja's doctoral project focuses on mid-Pleistocene sedimentary sequences from an archaeological site at Schöningen (Germany), famous due to the discovery of the oldest and well-preserved wooden hunting spears associated to Homo Heidelbergensis. She uses fossil chironomid larvae to reconstruct e.g. summer temperature changes during interglacial times to improve the knowledge about the living conditions of theses former humans and the embedding conditions of the hunting spears. During the scholarship at U. of Haifa, Sonja will focus on chironomid analysis on middle Pleistocene deposits from Germany (Schöningen) and from Israel (paleo-lakes Amora and Hula).
The work is done in close cooperation with Prof. Antje Schwalb, from Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany
