The project focuses on alpine glaciers and their role in the continental hydrologic cycle, as climate indicators and their interaction with the solid earth. In addition to many years of intensive research work on the Vernagtferner, the "house glacier" in the Ötztal Alps, investigations are being carried out in various glacier regions, e.g. Iceland, Norway, the Pamir, and the Karakorum. Along with…
The project “Johann Friedrich Blumenbach –Online” (www.blumenbach-online.de) aims at making the rise of German science within the European context visible, and at supplying a missing part in accessible primary source material on the cultural history of the time: the publications of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. This is particularly significant with regard to an essential aspect of this period: the…
Human evolution is a story of expansions. During the last two million years the genus Homo spread from Africa into Asia and Europe in several waves of migration. New species developed and old groups became extinct (range expansions). As early as three million years ago, hominins had established new ways of dealing with their specific environment through culture. Stone tools produced with the help…
The object of research is a long-term investigation of fluid release at natural mineral springs and mofettes in geodynamically active areas, especially in the Upper Vogtland. Changes of quantitative parameters, such as source discharge or degassing rate as well as radiometric-geochemical indicators (nuclide content, isotope ratio, ion and gas concentration) are linked to geophysical parameters,…
For the climatic-stratigraphic development in the Quaternary Earth history, an absolute time scale is worked out by the physical age determinations of rocks, fossils and archaeological objects in different areas of the Earth. Methods of luminescence dating and the investigation of their solid-state physics and dosimetric properties are of special interest. Other methods (e.g. radiocarbon and…
The research unit World Stress Map investigates the present-day tectonic stress field in the Earth's crust. For this purpose, the existing data set of the World Stress Map is constantly being expanded by newly received and critically reviewed data. The database and the stress maps are available online in an up-to-date form to the international scientific community. The main focus of the research…