Korhan Özkan got selected for Turkish Academy of Science (TÜBA) 2021 Young Scientist Awards (GEBİP). We are also pleased that our collaborator Erik Jeppesen was also got TÜBA International Academy Award. More information on the awards are here. Big congratulations to Korhan and Erik for their outstanding achievements. We are grateful to TÜBA and their support to our research.
Our team presented ongoing research on Antarctic Peninsula Food Webs in the SCAR Conference in 3-7 August 2020 and 4th National Polar Research Workshop on the 22nd of October 2020. In the online conference, 3 poster presentations were presented by Esra Mine Ünal, Saba Başkır and along with an oral presentation, by Korhan Özkan. We presented our studies on the food web structure and community composition, diatom stratigraphy and dietary DNA extraction for metabarcoding along the Antarctic peninsula, utilising surface sediment, sediment core and scat samples collected via the Turkish Antarctic Expedition Programme. Our research on Antarctic food web ecology is funded by TUBITAK 1001 programme.
Mustafa and Serhat conducted a field study in Konya Closed Basin to better understand the effect of water scarcicity on the ecology of lakes in arid landscapes. The fieldwork was held on Konya Closed Basin was completed between 21 and 27 June 2020, within the scope of the Saline Lakes Project. We sampled a total of 43 water bodies (22 were dams, and 21 were natural lakes) to understand their physico-chemical composition during the expedition.
A selection of photographs were exhibited in the Furuzan olşen Exhibition hall between 8-14 March of 2020. Photos were covering the stunning megafauna of the Antarctic, captured by Korhan Özkan during the Turkish Antarctic Expedition in 2019.
We finished our first expedition to Bolkar Mountains! We sampled the alpine lakes across the Bolkar Mountains range between the altitudes 2700-3300 m. We try to understand how these remote and isolated aquatic ecosystems respond to climate change and other anthropogenic disturbances. We conducted snap shot samplings as well as sediment cores for paleolimnology.
The expedition was conducted between 21st September 2019 and 25th September 2019. We aim at contributing to better understanding and protection of alpine lakes .
2019 Alpine Lakes Research Team: Keziban Kaynar, Korhan Ozkan, Serhat Ertugrul
