Dr. Werne received his PhD in Geological Sciences at Northwestern University in 2000 with an emphasis in Biogeochemistry. He was a Postdoctoral Research Scientist at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research from 2000-2002 and on the faculty of the Large Lakes Observatory and Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry (Assistant/Associate Professor) at the University of Minnesota Duluth before joining the Department in 2012. Dr. Werne spent a year in Perth, Australia as a Gledden Visiting Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies of the University of Western Australia, as well as a visiting scientist in the Western Australia Organic and Isotope Geochemistry Centre at Curtin University (2009-2010).
Valero-Garcés, B., M. Stockhecke, S. Lozano Garcia, B. Ortega Guerrero, M. Caballero Miranda, P.J. Fawcett, J.P. Werne, E.T. Brown, S. Sosa Najera, K. Pearthree, D. McGee (2021) Stratigraphy and Sedimentology of the Upper Pleistocene – Holocene Lake Chalco, México Basin. . In: Rosen M.R., Finkelstein D.B., Park Boush L., Pla-Pueyo S. (eds) Limnogeology: Progress, Challenges and Opportunities. Syntheses in Limnogeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66576-0_14
Scott*, W. P., S. Contreras, G.J. Bowen, T.E. Arnold*, R. Bustamante-Ortega, J.P. Werne (2021) Lake water based isoscape in central-south Chile reflects meteoric water. Scientific Reports, 11:8725, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-87566-4
O’Beirne*, M., J.P. Werne, R. Hecky, T. Johnson, S. Katsev, E. Reavie (2017) Anthropogenic climate change has altered primary productivity in Lake Superior. Nature Communications. DOI: 10.1038/ncomms15713
Johnson, T.C., J.P. Werne, E.T. Brown, A. Abbott*, M. Berke*, B. Steinman, J. Halbur*, S. Contreras*, S. Grosshuesch, A. Deino, R.P. Lyons, C.A. Scholz, S. Schouten, J. Sinninghe Damsté (2016) A progressively wetter climate in southern East Africa over the past 1.3 million years. Nature. v. 537 pp. 220-224. DOI: 10.1038/nature19065
Fawcett, P., J.P. Werne, R. Anderson, J. Heikoop, E. Brown, M. Berke*, S. Smith, F. Goff, L. Hurley, M. Cisneros-Dozal, S. Schouten, J. Sinninghe Damsté, Y. Huang, J. Toney, J. Fessenden, G. WoldeGabriel, V. Atudorei, J. Geissman, C. Allen (2011) Extended Megadroughts in the Southwestern United States during Pleistocene Interglacials. Nature. v. 470, pp. 518-521.
We use a combination of organic and stable isotopic biogeochemical techniques to investigate the biogeochemical record of environmental change preserved in aquatic sedimentary systems - especially lake and ocean sediments. Specific organic compounds called biomarkers, or molecular fossils, can be traced to the organism that produced them. Thus, from looking at organic remains in sediments, we can identify variations in the surrounding vegetation (trees and grasses), the aquatic phytoplanktonic community, as well as the micobial community (bacteria and archaea) that have occurred in the past, and use this information to understand global climate and environmental change. Current projects include sulfur isotope biogeochemistry in sulfidic lakes in the USA and Canada considered modern analogs of the Precambrian ocean, development of Pleistocene paleoclimate reconstructions and their link with human societies in southwestern North America (New Mexico, Arizona, Mexico), western South America (Chile, Peru) and East Africa (Malawi, Kenya, Ethiopia), and the development of molecular isotopic proxies for past temperature and hydrology.