Jalene Nalbant is a PhD Candidate at the Australian National University (ANU) with the College of Asia and the Pacific. Their PhD project uses lake sediments as archives of past environmental change, to reconstruct the history of human-environment dynamics in Western Micronesia. Jalene uses multi-proxy records to identify processes that drive mercury cycling through lake-catchment systems. They are particularly interested in identifying geochemical signatures of anthropogenically driven environmental change in lake sediments, as an alternative to using more traditional archaeological excavations.

Jalene completed their Masters of Archaeological and Evolutionary Science at the ANU, during which they investigated the processes driving the cycling of mercury in a tropical freshwater lake – Lake Lantoa (Sulawesi, Indonesia). This project demonstrated that tropical regions which have had long-term vegetation cover have been acting as long-term sinks of mercury, with implications for the use of mercury as a climate proxy (doi.org/10.3389/fenvc.2023.1241176).