Maija Heikkilä

Maija Heikkilä (Finland) is a palaeoecologist whose research focuses on long-term climate-ecosystem interactions. She graduated from the University of Helsinki with a PhD in geology in 2010, and has since worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Manitoba in Canada and in the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. Currently she holds an Academy Research Fellowship at the University of Helsinki. She has studied past changes in climate and cryosphere and their influence on large-scale vegetation dynamics, marine primary production and aquatic carbon accumulation from biological and biogeochemical information preserved in high-latitude lake and sea sediments. She is particularly interested in the reference value that geological archives in time scales beyond human measurements can provide for the interpretation of ongoing and future environmental changes. Maija has served as an Editor-in-Chief for the Magazine of the Geological Society of Finland, and is a founding and Steering Group member of the Arctic Cryosphere Change and Coastal Marine Ecosystems (ACME) working group of the PAGES/Future Earth Program.