Duration: 1976 to 2011

The project aimed to date paleoenvironmental archives (sediments, tree rings, water, speleothems) with the highest possible temporal resolution and to investigate and document abrupt climate fluctuations in the past. The main objective was to reconstruct changes in the global and regional climate over the past 10,000 and 300,000 years. The information gathered in the project is relevant for understanding the processes that govern the climate and for validating existing climate models. To this end, the project utilized dating methods such as 14C, Th/U, and 10Be, the electron spin resonance method, as well as mass spectrometric analyses of the isotopic composition of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. The research project collaborated very closely and successfully with geoscience institutes in Germany.

Chair of the Commission

Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Egon Althaus

Research Center Director

Prof. Dr. Augusto Mangini

Staff

• Holger Braun
• René Eichstädter
• Jens Fohlmeister
• Dr. Bernd Kromer
• Jörg Lippold
• Christian Mühlinghaus
• Daniela Polag
• Dr. Denis Scholz
• Dr. Andrea Schröder-Ritzrau
• Sahra Talamo
• Karoline Thomas
• Nicole Vollweiler
• Sebastian Welk

For more information about the research project, visit Dated Speleothems – Paleoenvironmental Archives (external link) and at the Institute for Environmental Physics (external link) at Heidelberg University.