Jonas Willingstorfer für VolkswagenStiftung
Understanding the Earth as a system: 10 million euros for reorientation and networking in "Earth system sciences"
Earth system sciences understand the world as a complex system. Phenomena of the Anthropocene, such as climate change, are the result of multiple interactions in this system concept, the interplay of which is researched by Earth system sciences. In order to establish this guiding principle in research and teaching, the Volkswagen Foundation has granted six junior professorships - with funding totalling around 10 million euros.
The junior professorships are intended to make a significant contribution to reorganising research and teaching at universities in order to develop an overarching perspective on the Earth system. For this reason, the foundation required applicants in the "Earth System Sciences" funding initiative to submit a concrete research agenda together with an overarching strategic concept. In this way, the foundation wants to ensure that the research project is embedded in networking projects in relevant research areas. Applications could be submitted for up to 1.5 million euros for up to six years.
The Volkswagen Foundation's Board of Trustees recently approved six of the projects applied for. They range from the investigation of climatic influences on biodiversity and the contribution of silicate weathering to CO2 emissions to plate tectonics and processes in the Earth's interior and their influence on the Earth's atmosphere - compared with similar processes on Venus. Two approved projects are presented here as examples:
CASCADE – Cascading impacts of climate extremes: new perspectives for interlinking Earth System Sciences (Dr. Mariana de Brito, University of Leipzig, around 1.56 million euros; Prof. Dr. Miguel Mahecha, around 110,000 euros)
In order to research the effects of climate extremes, Mariana de Brito wants to pursue an interdisciplinary approach that combines social and natural sciences. She is focussing on the consequences of floods and droughts on society. Using newspaper data as well as interviews with citizens and experts and surveys, the researcher wants to collect both quantitative and qualitative data in order to capture the population's perspective on rare events with serious consequences. She wants to identify important social and physical drivers that underlie the effects of climate extremes. To this end, she uses computational linguistics in the form of natural language processing and machine learning methods.
The junior professorship will be based at the Faculty of Physics and Earth System Sciences at Leipzig University. The university intends to use the new funding to explore the topics of "Coupling the spheres of the Earth system", "Systemic risks at the interface of climate and biodiversity change under the influence of human activities" and "Data science and AI methods for deciphering complex dynamics" in greater depth. Among other things, a series of seminars and a summer school will help to build a bridge between the junior professorship and the natural sciences and to integrate the humanities.
Whether people live in rural or urban areas, their actions influence not only their own immediate surroundings but also people and the environment far away from them. For example, urban processes in these highly complex human-environment systems always have an impact on the rural system and vice versa. This complex interplay between humans and the environment is the focus of Dr Valerie Graw's junior professorship. She includes planetary boundaries in her research and investigates which risk factors can cause a stable system to falter. She also examines which resilience approaches exist or need to exist in order to minimise damage caused by natural hazards, for example. In this context, she researches where safe and fair planetary boundaries lie. To this end, she analyses and processes large amounts of earth observation data. Her research centres include South America and sub-Saharan Africa, where she also integrates indigenous groups into her work.
The junior professorship will be based in the Faculty of Geosciences, which will use the funding to design and implement measures in research and teaching to strengthen and expand Earth system sciences in a new programme. The focus is on safe and equitable planetary boundaries for the climate, biosphere, water and nutrient cycles and aerosols. Networking, research data integration, study and teaching as well as transfer and communication, e.g. in the form of pop-up city labs and teacher training, are core elements of the concept.
Other granted projects:
- Building a Future with Earth System Sciences (Dr. Emma Dunne, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, around 1.45 million euros; Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Kießling, around 220,000 euros)
- Studying palaeoclimate at subannual to interannual resolution applying congruent imaging techniques (Dr. Igor Obreht, University of Mainz, around 1.55 million euros; Prof. Dr. Denis Scholz, 110,000 Euro)
- Soil and landscape dynamics − Quantifying processes in Earth’s Critical Zone (Svenja Riedesel, Ph.D., University of Cologne, around 1.47 million euros; Prof. Dr. Tony Reimann, around 210,000 euros)
- EPSS@UFR − Earth and Planetary System Sciences (Dr. Anna Gülcher, University of Freiburg, around 1.57 million euros; Prof. Dr. Thomas Kenkmann, around 138,000 euros)
