ALBERT

Description: Vortrag beim Workshop „Der Kerndatensatz Forschung - und nun? - Nutzen, Grenzen und Umsetzungsstrategien des Kerndatensatz Forschung und von Forschungsinformationssystemen“

Description: Mit ihren katastrophalen Auswirkungen, die den ganzen Globus betreffen, stellen Supereruptionen alle geschichtlich dokumentierten Eruptionen in den Schatten.

Description: Supereruptions represent enormous natural disasters which potentially impact the whole planet. They are unlike any other known and documented eruption.

Description: Die Weltklimakonferenz ist in Bonn zu Ende gegangen. Es wird klar, dass die Vertragsstaaten des Pariser Abkommens ohne die USA auskommen müssen.

Description: Menschliche Eingriffe ins Flusssystem oder natürliche Faktoren: Welche Einflüsse wiegen wie stark? Forscher des GFZ modellierten dies quantitativ.

Description: Human encroachment on the river system or natural factors: what are the influences and how heavily do they factor in? Researchers at the GFZ quantitatively modelled the impact.

Description: Angesichts der anhaltend dynamischen Veränderungen, welche die Digitalisierung für alle Wissenschaftsbereiche mit sich bringt, erscheint der Bedarf an einer Vernetzungs-, Abstimmungs- und Handlungsstruktur wie der Allianz-Initiative ungebrochen hoch. Die erfolgreiche Zusammenarbeit der deutschen Wissenschaftsorganisationen in der Allianz-Initiative wird daher für die Jahre 2018 bis 2022 fortgesetzt. Die Grundlagen der Zusammenarbeit werden im vorliegenden Leitbild Den digitalen Wandel in der Wissenschaft gestalten. Die Schwerpunktinitiative „Digitale Information“ der Allianz der deutschen Wissenschaftsorganisationen 2018 – 2022 dargelegt. Das Leitbild beschreibt Grundsätze und Anspruch der Allianz-Initiative (Kapitel 1), umreißt die Ausgangslage und das thematische Umfeld, in das sich die Initiative in ihrer dritten Periode der Zusammenarbeit einfügt (Kapitel 2) und benennt die Handlungsfelder des digitalen Wandels in der Wissenschaft sowie die sich daraus ergebenden potentiellen Arbeitsschwerpunkte für die Allianz-Initiative „Digitale Information“ (Kapitel 3).

Description: The element carbon forms the basic building block of all organic biomass on Earth. It consists of two stable isotopes with a mass of 12u (atomic mass unit) and 13u. Biological formation, degradation and alteration processes fractionate the carbon isotopes. Biological systems typically prefer the incorporation of 12C into their biomass and discriminate with regard to 13C. Thus, the compound-specific carbon isotope analysis on characteristic biomolecules for specific precursor organisms allows to assess biological sources and processes being involved in the biological cycling of carbon and to conclude on environmental and climatic conditions affecting these processes. Here two examples from the ongoing work at GFZ are presented showing the influence of geogenic processes on biological systems. This Geo-Bio-coupling is revealed by analyzing the carbon isotope composition of specific key components in the respective biological carbon system. Carbon sources and biological processes were discovered and the obtained results provide deep insights into the feedback of biological ecosystems to increased levels of greenhouse gas concentration in natural systems.

Description: Detailed geological mapping in the Barberton Mountains of north-eastern South Africa has identified units once deposited on a river flood plain. Investigations using an optical microscope have found structures that strongly suggested they developed within a soil profile, and these units had been previously dated to an age of 3.22 billion years. Within these soil horizons we found pyrite grains (FeS2) which contained rounded cores, and these most likely resulted from abrasion during river transport. These cores are commonly overgrown by pyrite rims that have well expressed morphologies. Furthermore, trace element data indicate these rims crystallized on the grain cores at or near the time of soil formation. Using a Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometer, a highly advanced analytical technology, we found that the sulphur isotopic composition of the pyrite cores is consistent with a magmatic origin. In contrast, the rim forming pyrite has a 34S/32S isotope ratio which is some 20 ‰ lower, indicative of a biological processing of sulphur. Our results demonstrate that biological processes were already taking place outside of the marine environment at 3.22 billion years ago, which is 400 million years earlier than previously documented.

Description: In the Earth’s subduction zones, some material from the down-going plate is transferred into the overlying mantle wedge and partly into subduction-related volcanic rocks. Lithium (Li) and boron (B) of subducted rocks, in particular of altered oceanic crust and siliciclastic sedimentary rocks, show a large and characteristic variation in their isotopic compositions. During progressive metamorphism and partial melting of the subducting material, Li and B are largely lost from the subducted rocks by fluid-mediated processes. The rising fluids eventually produce a geochemically and isotopically heterogeneous mantle wedge just above the subducting plate. The loss of Li and B from the down-going rocks is controlled by mineral stability in the subducting slab. Small-volume melts from this mantle wedge inherit the isotopic and chemical signature of the subducted material, i. e., of the altered oceanic crust and/or of siliciclastic sedimentary rocks. Thus, small-volume melts derived from the mantle wedge may reveal the nature of old sutures in orogenic belts.

Description: From 15 years of time-variable gravity fields of the GRACE mission, the mass-induced part of the global mean sea-level rise is estimated to be 1.5 mm/a, superimposed with large seasonal and also interannual variations as a consequence of climate change and anthropogenic use of continental water resources. Circulation-induced bottom pressure anomalies additionally observed by GRACE are found to be in line with predictions from ocean general circulation models and are related to large-scale variations in ocean transport in response to shifts in the surface wind regimes.

Description: Petroleum hydrocarbons in reservoirs are subjected to different degrees of abiotic and biotic alteration processes, which often have strong economic consequences since they lead to a decrease in oil quality and reduce the total volume of petroleum in place. Moreover, producibility of the respective fluids strongly depends on physical properties and hence composition. To evaluate these microbial processes in more detail, different approaches can be followed. Here, the changes in stable carbon isotopic signatures of petroleum hydrocarbons are evaluated in detail as biodegradation processes are known to result in an enrichment of the heavier isotopes in the residual hydrocarbons. The change in the isotopic composition can be used to quantify biodegradation by applying the Rayleigh-equation. The Rayleigh-equation correlates the decrease in concentration and the enrichment in the isotopic composition by a fractionation factor (a). This factor depends on the degradation mechanism and the substrate molecule and can be derived from degradation experiments. Thus, the use of carbon isotope ratios has become a sensitive tool in identification and quantification of biodegradation processes in petroleum reservoirs. This quantification is demonstrated using a set of slightly to moderately biodegraded crude oils from the Gullfaks oil field which was analysed for δ13C of the light hydrocarbons.

Description: Mit dem Journal „System Erde“ berichtet das Deutsche GeoForschungsZentrum GFZ über die unterschiedlichen Facetten seiner Forschungsarbeiten. Die Reihe richtet sich vor allem an Entscheidungsträger in Wissenschaft, Gesellschaft und Politik, an interessierte Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler sowie an die fachinteressierte Öffentlichkeit.

Description: A glance at the stars and, based on their location in the night sky, the calculation of your individual position on Earth was one of the three approaches used 125 years ago by the Royal Prussian Geodetic Institute on the Telegrafenberg. When “Sputnik 1”, the Earth’s first artificial escort (lat. Satellite), took up duty in 1957 the night shift for an astronomical geodesist changed dramatically. From that moment on not only objects from the catalog on stars were taken into account but satellites were now also tracked. Since then, the role of satellites in all geoscientific research has been steadily increasing. For a long time, satellites have not only provided details on position, but this modern positioning also provides exciting insights into the Earth‘s atmosphere. Furthermore, for years, satellites themselves have also provided images of the Earth‘s surface so that geo-researchers can, thus, analyze ongoing processes on the surface of our planet. This paper presents a loose outline of the development of satellite application on the Telegrafenberg and puts the reader in the mood for the following articles on geoscientific applications of satellites at the GFZ.

Description: The Rb-Sr decay system forms the basis for one of the oldest and most established isotopic dating techniques in geology. Its versatility arises from the fact that Rb and Sr are present in most rock-forming minerals, which provides the means to date geologic processes in a wide variety of rocks and geologic environments. In recent years, one of the main innovations of the Rb-Sr method was the direct age dating of deformation processes in the Earth’s crust. Since deformation is a key factor in shaping the Earth’s surface and the internal architecture of the crust, age data for deformation processes are essential to constrain the time scales of crustal evolution. Time constraints on deformation facilitate the calculation of rates of movements of crustal units, the understanding of orogenic processes and ultimately of the dynamics of the Earth’s crust. Deformation processes occur over the entire range of depths and temperatures in the crust, from migration of melts at depth, through ductile deformation in the middle crust, to brittle fragmentation of rocks in earthquake-related near-surface shear zones. This contribution provides an overview of the potential of Rb-Sr geochronology of rock deformation.

Description: Mit dem Journal „System Erde“ berichtet das Deutsche GeoForschungsZentrum GFZ über die unterschiedlichen Facetten seiner Forschungsarbeiten. Die Reihe richtet sich vor allem an Entscheidungsträger in Wissenschaft, Gesellschaft und Politik, an interessierte Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler sowie an die fachinteressierte Öffentlichkeit.

Description: To satisfy the increasing demand for food, water, raw materials, and energy resources, we need to understand the fundamental interactions between the solid earth and its surface. These interactions shape landscapes and provide the basis for sustaining ecosystems. The research field of metal stable isotope geochemistry that emerged over the past two decades has substantial potential to contribute towards this understanding. Advances in mass spectrometry facilitated precise measurements of stable isotope ratios of metal and metalloid elements (e g., Li, B, Mg, Si, Ca, Cr, Fe, Cu, Zn, Sr, Mo, etc). As novel biogeochemical process tracers they now begin to complement the traditional stable isotope systems (H, C, O, N, S). Here, we present a brief introduction in the Earth surface weathering reactor and show how stable isotopes trace the dissolution of rocks by interaction with fluids and subsequent soil formation. Also, the uptake of nutrients into plants produces a characteristic isotope fingerprint. We illustrate the isotopic legacy of processes initiated at the nanometer scale and propagated to the global scale. Combining isotope studies of modern ecosystems with studies of the Earth’s past surfaces as disclosed from geological archives will enable new discoveries on the evolution of our planet millions of years back and into its future. Exploiting this ‘new periodic table’ promises new insights into the nature of a multitude of reactions, thereby bridging several disciplines such as geochemistry, geology, biology, hydrology and life sciences.

Description: Länge: 15 Min.

Description: Der Schwerpunkt des Gutachtens soll darauf liegen, wie ORCID an wissenschaftlichen Einrichtungen in Deutschland implementiert wird. Dabei werden die institutionellen Regularien sowie die deutschen und europäischen Normen, denen wissenschaftliche Einrichtungen in Deutschland unterliegen, die ORCID implementieren, betrachtet. Dabei soll auch der Tatsache Rechnung getragen werden, dass dabei Datenflüsse in die USA entstehen. Zentrale Anforderung ist, dass das Gutachten möglichst allgemein verständlich und allgemeingültig formuliert wird und somit einen Orientierungsrahmen für die rechtliche Prüfung vor Ort, also etwa an Hochschulen und außeruniversitäre Forschungseinrichtungen bietet. Anliegen des Gutachtens ist es, wissenschaftliche Einrichtungen bei der rechtskonformen Umsetzung der Autorenidentifikation mit ORCID zu unterstützen. Der Erstellung des Gutachtens ging ein Prozess voraus, der die Zusammenarbeit mit dem DFG-Projekt ORCID DE gewährleisten sollte. So wurden im November 2016 im Rahmen eines Workshops nach Darstellung grundsätzlicher Datenschutzprinzipien spezifische Fragestellungen erarbeitet (Annex I14); im Rahmen eines weiteren „Community Inputs“ (Annex II15), der über das Projekt ORCID DE gesammelt wurde, wurden weitere Aspekte adressiert. Eingeflossen in das Gutachten ist ebenfalls eine Korrespondenz mit den Betreibern von ORCID, in der zu einzelnen Fragen, die im Rahmen der Bearbeitung aufgetaucht sind, Stellung genommen wurde.

Description: One of the major goals of the Geosciences is to identify and comprehend material cycling in our planet in order to understand mantle geodynamic processes. These processes are fundamental to the formation of the continental crust and the atmosphere, mantle-crustatmosphere interactions, and planetary formation as a whole. With our systematic, integrated studies of He, Ne, Sr, Nd and Pb isotopes of globally distributed mid-ocean ridge basalts and ocean island basalts we have contributed significantly to refining existing models on the behaviour of He and Ne during melt formation and evolution as well as models of the geochemical structure of the entire mantle. We have e.g. shown that He and Ne are more compatible during melt formation than their mother isotopes 235U, 238U and 232Th. Therefore, it is no longer necessary to postulate the existence of a virtually non-degassed, isolated lower mantle reservoir. We have also shown that the upper mantle is chemically heterogeneous at different spatial and temporal scales, indicating that the mixing efficiency of the upper mantle is not as good as previously thought. In addition, based on He, Ne and Ar isotope and trace-element data from the Foundation hotspot we have shown that the associated near ridge seamounts erupt lavas with a trace-element signature characteristic of oceanic gabbro, which indicates the existence of recycled, virtually unchanged oceanic lithosphere in the plume source.

Description: Energiewende ist Daseinsvorsorge. Eine erfolgreiche Energiewende benötigt eine Wärmewende! Innovationen, Demonstration und gesellschaftliche Akzeptanz spielen dabei eine Schlüsselrolle. Das „Zwanzig20- Forum Wärmewende“ entwickelt Strategien für den zukünftigen Einsatz von innovativen Technologien zur Realisierung der Wärmewende. Wir sind davon überzeugt, dass eine effiziente Wärmeversorgung urbaner Räume aus heimischen, regenerativen Energiequellen nicht nur möglich, sondern auch umsetzbar ist. Die Wärmewende kan gelingen, wenn die Energieeffizienz und der Anteil erneuerbarer Wärme gesteigert werden und der Sektor Strom geschickt in die Wärmeerzeugng eingebunden wird. Effizienzmaßnahmen haben Vorrang, stoßen aber an Grenzen. Erneuerbare Energien besitzen im Wärmesektor ein hohes Entwicklungspotential. Es gibt kein Patentrezept, die Wärmewende muss technologieoffen gestaltet werden. Im Transformationsprozess spielen Akzeptanz, Demografie und strukturierte Stadtentwicklung eine Schlüsselrolle. Deshalb sind die technologischen Lösungsansätze in eine holistische Sichtweise zu integrieren. Für eine Wärmewende sollten Lösungen ab der Dimension „Quartier“ vorrangig umgesetzt werden. Städte sind stark verdichtete Lebensräume des Menschen. Wärme-, Kälte- und Gasnetze bringen erneuerbare Energien in diese Lebensräume. Daher werden diese Netze in Städten erhalten und ausgebaut. In Großstädten gibt es auch künftig einen substanziellen Bedarf für eine zentrale Fernwärmeversorgung. Hierfür ist zukünftig die Nutzung von Erdwärme unverzichtbar. Die Netze sind die Energieversorgungsinfrastrukturen, die eine Integration der Innovationen von morgen ermöglichen, also von Lösungen, die wir heute noch nicht kennen. Bei vielen technologischen Prozessen fällt Abwärme an, die ungenutzt an die Umwelt abgegeben wird. Die Stadt der Zukunft heizt und kühlt mit dieser Abwärme. Dafür sind Speicher notwendig, auch saisonale Großspeicher. Demonstration ist wichtig für den Erfolg der Wärmewende. Demonstration adressiert die vorhandenen Zielkonflikte, hilft den Veränderungsprozess lösungsorientiert zu gestalten und fördert die Akzeptanz. Benötigt werden mehr Demonstrationsprojekte. Ausgehend von technologischen Lösungen bauen sichtbare und erfolgreiche Demonstrationsprojekte Vorbehalte und Unsicherheiten ab und schaffen Blaupausen für erfolgreiches Handeln und Wirtschaften. Dabei vernetzten sie an einem konkreten Standort die relevanten Akteure und verhelfen Innovationen zum Markteinstieg. Der Entwicklung von regenerativen Demonstrationsvorhaben stehen deutliche Hemmnisse gegenüber, daher ist sie für alle Beteiligten zeit- und ressourcenintensiv. Eine regenerative Wärmeversorgung erfordert zusätzliche Investitionen und muss sich als neuer Teilnehmer in einem etablierten und gedeckten Wärmemarkt behaupten. Kostendruck und Konkurrenzstellung liefern dabei wenig Anreize für Versorger und Verbraucher, regenerative Technologien zu implementieren. Die Anwendung innovativer Technologien stellt vielfach die etablierten Rollen zwischen Erzeuger und Verbraucher sowie dem Produkt der Wertschöpfung in Frage. Neue Geschäftsmodelle haben es schwer sich durchzusetzen, da die etablierten Modelle gut funktionieren. Demonstrationsvorhaben müssen daher durch staatliche Förderprogramme stimuliert werden. Integrierte Verbundprojekte zwischen der Wärmewirtschaft und öffentlichen Forschungsinstitutionen liefern gute Voraussetzungen für eine Förderfähigkeit.

Description: Mit dem Internet und der Digitalisierung haben sich fur die Wissenschaft neue M ¨ ¨oglichkeiten der Verbreitung und des Austausches von Wissen und Information er¨offnet. Unter dem Stichwort Open Science wird neben Open Access auch die Zug¨anglichkeit und Nachnutzung von digitalen Forschungsdaten diskutiert. Peter Schirmbacher hat sich in Forschung und Lehre mit der Relevanz, der Gestaltung und der Nutzung von Informationsinfrastrukturangeboten fur digitale Forschungsdaten befasst und damit wegweisende Beitr ¨ ¨age zur Weiterentwicklung dieser Services fur die digital arbeitende Wissenschaft geleistet. Vorliegender ¨ Beitrag gibt einen Uberblick ¨ uber den Entwicklungsstand der Informationsinfrastrukturan- ¨ gebote fur digitale Forschungsdaten und ordnet sie in die wissenschaftspolitische Diskussio- ¨ nen um Open Science ein.

Description: Der Film dokumentiert den Kurs für Grundschulkinder „Geochemische Schatzsuche“. Ziel des Kurses ist es, Grundschulkinder für Naturwissenschaften zu begeistern. Länge: 6:37 min

Description: The Earth’s surface is constantly changing. Sometimes these changes are very fast. When glaciers shrink or when natural disasters such as landslides or volcanic eruptions occur, their impact on landscapes can directly be observed. Other changes are too slow to be observed by the human eye. Such slow changes still form lofty mountain ranges like the Himalaya, because tectonic forcing has uplifted them persistently by a few millimeters each year over many millions of years. Such mountain ranges affect wind and rain patterns and thus the water cycle, and, by the process of erosion, they deliver sediment to valleys and floodplains where fertile soils form. Rare radioactive or stable cosmogenic nuclides have become the state-of-the-art clocks to time these rates of change in all kinds of landscapes. Produced by cosmic ray bombardment in the atmosphere or in minerals at the Earth’s surface, they are used to date landforms and to measure the erosion rate of landscapes. For example, we apply them to constrain the ages of glacial surfaces over hundreds to thousands of years. In river sediments they tell us how fast a mountain range is eroding and how much sediment is exported from a catchment. When buried in the sedimentary record, they inform us on erosion rates in the geologic past. Because of their power to infer landscape-forming forces, cosmogenic nuclides allow to predict the impact of changes of the human habitat induced by man.

Description: Since March 2002 the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, together with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the German Space Agency (DLR), operates the twin satellite mission GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) and is part of the joint US-German Science Data System. Over GRACE‘s 15+ years of operation, researchers from GFZ and other national/ international institutions have developed innovative techniques to use the GRACE mass transport data set and to combine it with other observations and models for new insights into the Earth system. Highlights are the monitoring of changes in the hydrological cycle such as ground water depletion and related droughts, prognosis of floods in large river systems, the melting of Greenland’s and Antarctica’s ice sheets and large glacier systems, changes in the ocean dynamics and related sea level rise or observation of postseismic relaxation after large earthquakes. Currently, GFZ implements with JPL/NASA the successor mission GRACE-FO (Follow-on) which is due for launch in early 2018. The primary objective of GRACE-FO is to continue mass transport monitoring as only by long time series reliable conclusions on climate change can be drawn. The secondary objectives are to continue GRACE’s radio occultation measurements for provision to Numerical Weather Services and to demonstrate the improvement of the measurement of the inter-satellite separation by an innovative laser ranging interferometer. This is a necessary prerequisite to improve the spatial and temporal resolution by Next Generation Gravity Missions.

Description: This assessment focuses on how ORCID will be implemented in scientific institutions in Germany. In doing so, the institutional rules and German and European standards to which the scientific institutions in Germany which implement ORCID are subject, will be considered. In the process, account should be taken of the fact that personal data being collected in the European Union will be transferred into the USA. The key requirement of this assessment is that the assessment be formulated such that it is as generally understandable and universally applicable as possible, thus offering a guiding framework for legal evaluation onsite, for example in colleges and non-university research institutions. The concern of the assessment is to support scientific institutions in the legally compliant implementation of author identification using ORCID. The preparation of the assessment was preceded by a process which ought to ensure cooperation with the DFG Project ORCID DE. Specific questions were compiled in this manner (Annex I)14 during a workshop in 2016 after a presentation of fundamental data protection principles; further issues were addressed within the scope of an additional “Community Input” (Annex II), which was gathered by the project ORCID DE. Also, part of the assessment was a correspondence with the operators of ORCID. The corresponding questions of this exchange are also addressed in this assessment.

Description: Der Report des Helmholtz Open Science Workshops „Zugang zu und Nachnutzung von wissenschaftlicher Software“ #hgfos16 behandelt die Themen Standards und Qualitätssicherung; Reproduzierbarkeit; Lizenzierung und weitere rechtliche Aspekte; Zitation und Anerkennung; Sichtbarkeit und Modularität; Geschäftsmodelle; Personal, Ausbildung, Karrierewege. Diese Themen sind eng miteinander verzahnt. Für jeden Themenbereich werden jeweils die Relevanz, Fragestellungen, Herausforderungen, mögliche Lösungsansätze und Handlungsempfehlungen betrachtet.

Description: The geomagnetic field originates in the Earth’s outer core and reaches into space for several Earth radii. It thereby tells us about variations in the deep Earth, controls the shape and strength of electric currents and particle drift in the ionosphere and magnetosphere, and protects Earth’s life from solar and cosmic radiation. It is therefore important to understand the geophysical processes that lead to geomagnetic variations, and how the solar-terrestrial system is affected by space weather events. Research on geomagnetism, upper atmosphere research and magnetospheric as well as radiation belt physics profit enormously from dedicated satellite missions in low Earth orbit. GFZ’s scientific achievements in these research areas significantly benefit from ESA’s Swarm constellation mission, launched in 2013. GFZ contributed largely to its design and product definition by leveraging experiences from the successful CHAMP mission operated by GFZ during the last decade. Parameters including the geomagnetic and electric field, air density and wind, electron content and temperature are measured with high precision and global coverage. Also, particle flux measurements on the Lomonosov satellite will help us better understand the loss of particles from the Van Allen radiation belts into the atmosphere. The data from these missions are currently also utilized within the GFZ-coordinated Priority Programme 1788 “Dynamic Earth” funded by the German Research Foundation.

Description: Stable isotopes of the light elements Hydrogen (H), Carbon (C), Nitrogen (N), and Oxygen (O) are being measured in section 5.2 Climate Dynamics and Landscape Evolution at the GFZ in different terrestrial climate archives such as lake sediments, speleothems and tree rings. The stable isotope ratios of these elements reflect environmental conditions like precipitation, temperature, productivity and vegetation type. To translate isotope parameters into high-quality proxies of past climate and environmental variability, monitoring devices have been deployed which detect seasonal variations, pathways and distortions of stable isotope signals. Oxygen stable isotopes play a major role in paleoclimatology because of their broad variation and fractionation of 16O and 18O in water, carbonate and biological systems. In general, the isotopic ratios of oxygen isotopes reflect changes in atmospheric circulation systems which are important drivers for climate variability. Back through time, the variations of oxygen isotope ratios (18O/16O) in precipitation and their corresponding climate fingerprint are conserved in lake sediments, speleothems and tree rings. Oxygen isotope records from networks of these geoarchives allow local to regional assessments of past climate variability.

Description: Satellite remote sensing offers the possibility to continuously, globally collect information about Earth’s surface properties, and thus possesses an enormous scientific and economic potential. The spatio-temporal recording of information opens up a wide range of possibilities for large-scale monitoring of changes and influencing factors, e.g. in atmospheric research, agriculture and forestry, geology, urban areas and the analysis of natural hazards. The European Union‘s Copernicus programme marks the beginning of a new era in satellite-based Earth observation by designing and launching the Sentinel series, an operational fleet of high-continuity, multi-combinable observation systems. This enables completely new objects of investigation, but also requires a new level of automated data processing in order to make the huge amounts of data available for analysis. This article provides an insight into current remote sensing research at the GFZ. First, it presents the activities related to the creation of preprocessing standards and interfaces for data evaluation, geo-data management and visualization. In the following, examples for multi-sensor analysis of land use potentials and natural hazards are shown, in order to finally discuss the role of the GFZ in the development of hyperspectral satellite missions and related data analysis.

Description: Along with cell phones and the internet, satellite navigation is an integral part of everyday life. However, satellite navigation signals provide much more than precise information on user locations. Even before the GPS was declared fully operational in 1995, the potential for these globally and continuously available navigation signals for Earth observation and geoscientific applications was recognized. Such applications include the precise monitoring of continental plate movements with sub-mm/year accuracy (now used in real-time as part of early earthquake warning systems), regional and global atmospheric and ionospheric sounding to improve weather forecasts and climate change predictions, and for monitoring of water, ice, and land surfaces. The Earth observation prospects and related spectrum of applications are continuously growing, mainly stimulated by the transition from a single constellation (GPS) to Multi-GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) with the Russian GLONASS, Chinese BeiDou and European Galileo satellites and by the increasing number of GNSS receivers available both on the ground and aboard Low Earth Orbiting satellites.

Description: The use of stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes in hydrocarbon exploration and active magmatic and/or hydrothermal systems (e. g. black smoker, volcanic and geothermal fields) is widely applied and provides important information about the sources and isotopic compositions of natural gases. However, no information about the composition, origin and fate of migrated gases can be obtained in unexplored hydrocarbon provinces or commercially dry fields due to the lack of gas tests during drilling. The same holds true for fossil magmatic and hydrothermal ore-forming systems. In such frontier areas gas-bearing fluid inclusions hosted in minerals can provide pointers to past gas migration and the origin of gases. A new analytical method for simultaneous measurements of stable isotope ratios of nitrogen (N2), methane (CH4), and carbon dioxide (CO2) in natural gas mixtures released by crushing of fluid inclusions in minerals was developed at the GFZ. Isotopic studies of fluid inclusion gases using this on-line method have been performed so far with regard to the origin of gases in hydrocarbon- and ore-forming systems. These studies have demonstrated the applicability and importance of the developed method in the field of Geo Resources research.

Description: Die normale Bevölkerung darf die 7-km-Sperrzone um den Vulkan nicht betreten. Irving Munguia Gonzalez ist am Colima aufgewachsen und erforscht ihn jetzt.

Description: The geologist Irving Munguia Gonzalez talks about his experience of living with an active volcano.

Description: Deutschland heizt fast ausschließlich fossil. Viel unausgeschöpftes Potential für eine Energiewende ruht in der Tiefe. Ein Interview mit Prof. Dr. Ernst Huenges.

Description: Germany heats its buildings almost exclusively with fossil fuels. But far below the Earth's surface, a large and untapped potential may one day turn the tide. An interview with Prof. Dr. Ernst Huenges.

Description: Isotopes, these sub-species of the chemical elements that differ in their mass, are the basic constituents of all matter in the planetary system, the Earth, and its organisms. The relative abundances of isotopes shift by radioactive decay, irradiation of the Earth’s surface by cosmic rays, physico-chemical reaction, and mixing. Isotope Geochemists use these principles to measure the timing of Earth’s changes, to disclose the processes of biogeochemical transformations, and to identify the sources of Earth materials. In this issue of the GFZ-Journal “System Erde” the Isotope Geochemists at GFZ provide an overview of the enormous breadth of the components of the Earth system they explore (shown in the title figure). These applications encompass the reconstruction of past climate, the speed and time of Earth surface change, how rock becomes soil, and how plants use the released metals, how biomolecules, petroleum and metal ores are formed in the geosphere with and without microbes, when life moved from sea to land billions of years ago, the measuring of rock deformation in “fossil” subduction zones, that sediment, once deposited on the seafloor, goes all the way into subduction zones and returns to the surface in volcanic eruptions, the use of rare gas isotopes to infer the structure of the Earth’s interior. This article provides an introduction into the principles and the technology used to detect isotopes.