State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology

In the past years, BGEG has made a great achievement on global stratigraphy, climatic changes and biocrisis. They established the most important stratigraphic boundary standard of the global stratigraphic systems, the Global Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) of Permian-Triassic boundary in the Meishan section of Zhejiang Province, China in 2001. BGEG staff also determined biotic extinction pattern and proposed the volcanism to be one of the main triggers causing the end-Permian mass extinction, the greatest biocrisis of life on Earth. They applied modern biologic trophic pyramid concept to reconstruct ecosystem’s recovery after major mass extinctions in the geological past. BGEG researchers have also modeled quantitatively the Holocene rainfall variations based on oxygen isotopes of stalagmites in South China and assessed anthropogenic and microbial impacts on underground waters in our modern-day environments.

A variety of state-of-the art analytical instruments on Geobiology, Geochemistry and Geophysics facilitate BGEG staff to achieve their research peaks, including the MC-ICPMS, GC/GC-ToMS, ICP-TOF-MS, Micro-CT, SEM,GC-MS, GC-IRMS and MAT-253. The LC-MS/MS produced very high quality data in the global blind comparison of microbial lipid analysis among 35 international laboratories in 2011.