InnoPool projects

The Innovation Pool for the Research Field Earth and Environment serves to strengthen cooperation between the centers, promote new innovative ideas in 3-year projects, support initiatives by young scientists and react flexibly to new, socially relevant topics in research campaigns.

For PoF IV, the Helmholtz Association together with the funding bodies agreed to set up virtual funds for each Research Field to support new research and development initiatives. The available funding amounts to 1% of the program funds (LK I). This agreement is stipulated in the overarching strategic guidelines (Forschungspolitische Ziele) for the Helmholtz Association. The innovation pool for the Research Field Earth and Environment serves to

strengthen the cooperation between the centers

fund new innovative ideas in 3-year projects

support initiatives proposed by young scientists

flexibly respond to emerging, socially relevant themes in research campaigns.

By pooling the centers' funds in a (virtual) research field budget, networking between the centers and flexibility and responsiveness to current challenges within the PoF will be strengthened. For the period 2022-2024, the first four Innopool projects were selected by the Program Board in an internal evaluation process.

InnoPool projects (2025-2027)

ACTUATE: climate Adaption sCenarios To redUce the impActs of exTreme Events

ACTUATE aims to generate knowledge essential for anticipating and mitigating the social, economic and environmental impacts of future meteorological extreme events in urban and agricultural regions by exploring adaptation strategies using a hierarchy of global, regional, land surface, hydrological, biogeochemical and urban models.

Lead: Patrick Ludwig (KIT)

ACTUATE aims to explore climate adaptation scenarios to generate knowledge urgently needed to anticipate and reduce the social, economic and environmental impacts of future meteorological extreme events. Using a hierarchy of numerical models, we will explore the impacts of different types of extreme events, including but not limited to extreme precipitation and droughts, challenging the limits of current modelling approaches. Particular attention will be paid to impacts and adaptation strategies in relation to urban areas and agricultural management, with a regional focus on Europe. Key questions we aim to address in this project include: How can we reduce heat stress and improve air quality during future heat waves in urban areas? How resilient are different crop sequences and agricultural management strategies to future extremes? ACTUATE will use a hierarchy of global, regional, land surface, hydrological, biogeochemical and urban models to simulate the impacts of future meteorological extremes in an event-based storyline framework. We aim to address the limitations of current storyline simulations in reproducing extreme precipitation events by combining global storyline simulations with the pseudo global warming approach by deriving 'flow-aware anomalies' from global storyline simulations. In addition, we will not only transfer observed extreme events into warmer climates, but also assess how their impacts could be mitigated through adaptation strategies using specialized urban/agricultural models.

Team:

KIT: Patrick Ludwig (lead), Joaquim G. Pinto, Tatiana Klimiuk, Soner Bagcaci, Benjamin Fersch, Clemens Scheer, Lioba Martin

AWI: Helge Gößling, Antonio Sanchez Benitez, Marylou Athanas

FZJ: Harrie-Jan Hendricks-Franssen, Christian Poppe, Domenico Taraborrelli

Hereon: Kevin Sieck

Participating Centers:

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)

Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine research (AWI)

Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ)

Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon

AGRIO: Effect of anthropogenic modifications and climate change on greenhouse gas emissions along the river-ocean continuum

AGRIO will monitor GHGs (CO₂, CH₄, N₂O) along the river-sea-continuum by integrating their emissions, sources and sinks into biogeochemical models. We combine field measurements and experiments to estimate basic metabolic pathways and their reaction to anthropogenic changes. River, estuary and coastal models will be coupled into a comprehensive numerical platform for the Elbe-German Bight-System.

Lead: Ingeborg Bussmann (AWI), Tina Sanders (Hereon - Co-Lead)

Along the river-to-sea continuum, conditions of biogeochemical processes including organic matter mineralization change fundamentally. The underlying assumption of this project is that it makes a difference whether organic matter entering the freshwater network is mineralized under freshwater conditions or if it is transported to the sea where it is mineralized under more sulphate reducing conditions. This determines the process of Greenhouse gas (GHG: CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O) production, consumption and finally emission to the atmosphere

The overall questions of the ARGIO project are, how much GHG will be net emitted to the atmosphere within the river-ocean continuum, how does the ratio between the different GHGs shift along the river to sea continuum and what impact do water management strategies have on this. Anthropogenic modifications such as the construction of weirs can lead to changes in the sedimentation regime and GHG cycles. These shall be estimated by experimental mesocosms.

With AGRIO we will provide the first comprehensive numerical platform for the entire Elbe-North Sea System, including the sources and sinks for GHG emissions. This platform will provide stakeholders with what-if scenarios to mitigate GHG emissions and to highlight resilient ways to balance between anthropogenic demands on the river-sea-continuum and GHG emissions related to them.

Team:

AWI: Ingeborg Bussmann (Lead), Androsov Alexey, Danilov Sergey, Sidorenko Vera

Hereon: Tina Sanders (Co-Lead), Brix Holger, Lemmen Carsten, Pein Johannes

UFZ: Bernhard Vivien, Kamjunke Norbert, Koschorreck Matthias, Rode Michael

Participating Centers:

Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine research (AWI)

Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon

Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ

AI MareExplore: Utilizing AI for marine enzyme discovery to address human-made grand challenges

AI MareExplore will harness the predictive power of artificial intelligence (AI) for the sustainable exploitation of marine microbial biocatalysts for a future blue and circular bioeconomy. We will utilize available extensive marine genomic databases from the public to train AI language models and predict biocatalysts for different use cases.

Lead: Erik Borchert (GEOMAR), Ulisses Rocha (UFZ), Dörte Rother (FZJ)

Our interdisciplinary consortium will develop and benchmark an AI-driven microbial bioprospecting pipeline against computational bioexploitation and deliver biocatalysts for anthropogenic grand challenges (Carbon capture, plastic waste revalorization) on a proof of concept level. AI MareExplore brings together partners from different thematic clusters (T5 – Future landscapes, T6 – Marine and polar life, T7 – Bioeconomy, T8 – Georesources), illustrating the interdisciplinary applicability of AI tools. These tools will leverage the hidden marine microbial potential to address anthropogenic grand challenges. They will thus contribute to the following program objectives: PO2 (Climate mitigation and adaptation), PO5 (Ecosystems), PO7 (Circular economy) and PO8 (Environmental pollution). Further it will interlink ecological (GFZ, UFZ), bioinformatic (UFZ, GEOMAR), and biotechnological (FZJ, GEOMAR) approaches to create a holistic pipeline that can be transcribed for other challenges in future projects. Thus, the workflows developed in this project will be designed to be flexible and adaptable to other human-made grand challenges. The interlinkage of the different scientific fields illustrates the complementary expertise present in this project. The research consortium will be supported by numerous research activities from the involved partners, including international projects (ASG, CLUE-TERRA), EU projects (MIX-UP, Uplift, Glaukos, BiodeCCodiNNg, XTREAM) and national projects (BioPlastiCycle, Fuel Science Center, NFDI4Microbiota, Bioeconomy Science Center). This tight integration within the research landscape guarantees the feasibility and dissemination of the work and its results.

Participating Centers:

Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ

GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel

Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ)

GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences

Team:

CSponge: Landscapes as Carbon Sponges – Towards long-term net-negative land use Program Objectives

In CSponge, we aim to develop a new landscape-scale concept for future land use and management, based on the utilization of natural carbon dioxide removal processes operating on geological timescales.

Lead: Dirk Sachse (GFZ), Gesine Mollenhauer (AWI), Oliver Lechtenfeld (UFZ)

To realize ‘net-zero’ CO₂ emissions natural and technical CO₂ removal (CDR) approaches are indispensable. Current natural CDR techniques, like enhancing soil carbon storage or afforestation, fix carbon only for decades with limited capacity. Sustainable approaches to stabilize carbon at multi-millennial timescales require transfer into long-term marine depocenters via fluvial transport. In CSponge we will use model landscapes in northeastern Germany to systematically assess and quantify at landscape scale fixation, storage, stabilization, and export of carbon, their natural and anthropogenic drivers and the timescales on which they operate. Our results will be used to develop

new pathways of sustainable, net-negative land use and to aid establishing a carbon-neutral

society. We use organic and inorganic geochemical methods to quantify the effect of past natural and anthropogenic disturbances on the carbon budget of fluvial landscapes and assess future pathways. We provide an estimate of multi-millennial carbon sequestration potential of fluvial landscapes and quantify how rivers link the biological to the geologicalcarbon cycle – crucial knowledge to develop management options for future net-zero land use.

Team:

GFZ: Dirk Sachse (lead), Jingjing Wang, Niels Hovius, Torsten Sachs, Susanne Liebner; Cecile Blanchet

AWI: Gesine Mollenhauer (lead), Manuel Ruben, Boris Koch, Walter Geibert

UFZ: Oliver Lechtenfeld (lead), Evgenia Blagodatskaya, Christian Siebert, Jörg Tittel, UFZ PhD student

Participating Centers:

GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences

Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine research (AWI)

Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ

D-Twins: Digital Twins for Critical Zones under Climate Change

D-Twins will develop a prototype for a digital twin system for the critical zone impacted by climate extremes and cascading hazard events. We aim to define workflows that can assimilate near real-time data for continuous updates and generate future scenarios for climate change adoption policy.

Lead: Hui Tang (GFZ)

D-Twins aims to develop a prototype digital twin system (DTS) for the critical zone subject to climate extremes. The Critical Zone (CZ) is the thin layer between the upper surface of unweathered rock and the vegetation's upper boundary, where snow, rock, soil, water, air, and organisms interact. This vital ecosystem functions as Earth's "skin," supporting the diverse biological communities that contribute to the health and sustainability of our planet and hosts most of our society's agricultural production, water, and energy resources. Especially in the northern permafrost regions, it serves as a foundational base for the livelihoods of local communities. It is also one of the most crucial carbon stores in the Arctic region and is sensitive to climate change. Equally, the critical zone is a critical controlling factor for multi-hazards, such as floods and landslides. In cold regions, the thawing of permafrost, characterized by ground ice melt and subsidence, could place critical infrastructure at significant risk. Despite its proximity, the critical zone remains one of the least well-characterized parts of the Earth system. Therefore, D-Twins will answer the following questions: What are the best methods to determine physical properties in the critical zone? Can we upscale these site-specific measurements to a larger scale? Based on that, can we build a DTS to study the impact of different climatic extremes? How can we quantitatively understand the permafrost-climate feedback? Finally, could we provide socioeconomic impact forecasting and necessary adaptation policy for various scenarios, particularly extreme events?

Team:

GFZ: Hui Tang (lead), Jean Braun

UFZ: Christian Klassert, Jasmin Heilemann, Luis Samsniego

AWI: Julia Boike

FZJ: Daniel Caviedes Voullieme

Participating Centers:

GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences

Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ

Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine research (AWI)

Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ)

EXTREME-ADAPT: Quantifying the effect of adaptation measures on spatiotemporal changes in flood and drought risk

EXTREME-ADAPT overarching ambition is to offer a systemic perspective on the historical and contemporary factors influencing flood and drought risk in Central Europe. This interdisciplinary project bridges AI, engineering, and hydroclimatology to provide actionable insights for climate adaptation.

Lead: Mariana Madruga de Brito (UFZ)

EXTREME-ADAPT addresses the increasing impacts of hydrological extremes, such as floods and droughts, by investigating their driving factors: hazard, exposure, vulnerability, and adaptation. Focusing on the Central European river basins (e.g., Danube, Rhine, Elbe, Weser, Oder), the project employs a dual temporal perspective—spanning 500 years of historical data and contemporary records since 1990.

The project integrates paleoclimate indicators and hydroclimatic data to identify hazard hotspots. Using Bayesian networks and in-house datasets, we will explore causal dependencies between hazard, exposure, vulnerability, and impacts in these key hotspot areas. This will provide information on the main contemporary drivers of change in impacts. Leveraging the unprecedented abundance of digital texts (e.g., climate adaptation plans) and cutting-edge large language models, we will collect evidence on implemented adaptation measures. Finally, interpretable machine learning tools and qualitative analyses will be used to assess the effect of adaptation measures on risk reduction. Results will provide a step-change in the assessment of risk generation processes and their temporal changes. This will enable us to disentangle complex interactions between risk drivers and the implemented adaptation measures, generating a new basis for analyzing their effectiveness.

Collaboration among four Helmholtz Centers ensures interdisciplinary excellence. EXTREME-ADAPT innovative approach lies in integrating several data-driven AI tools and benchmark datasets developed at UFZ, GFZ, AWI, and KIT.

Team:

UFZ: Mariana Madruga de Brito (lead), Larisa Tarasova, Jan Sodoge, Sungju Han, Daniela Peña Guerrero

GFZ: Heidi Kreibich, Danijel Schorlemmer, Kristina Koronaci

AWI: Monica Ionita, Viorica Nagavciuc

KIT: Uwe Ehret

Participating Centers:

Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ

GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences

Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine research (AWI)

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)

INNOVA: INNOvative approaches for the cultivation of UlVA in open waters, valorisation of its biomass, climate and social benefits

INNOVA aims to develop innovative ways of cultivating the green seaweed Ulva floating in the open ocean and extracting high-value compounds using a biorefinery approach for the circular bioeconomy.

Lead: Mar Fernandez Mendez (AWI)

Seaweed mariculture based on innovative techniques can contribute to a sustainable use of resources and the establishment of the blue circular economy and enables the transition towards a net-zero lifestyle to adapt to and mitigate climate change. The green seaweed Ulva spp. is already cultivated and consumed in Asia and parts of Europe. Furthermore, it is a prolific source of high-value biomolecules with numerous uses in the cosmetic, pharma- and nutraceutical industries. However, innovative seeding procedures including cost reduction by automation as well as economically efficient growing methods are necessary to scale-up production and promote seaweed aquaculture in European waters. The transition to off-shore areas, less burdened by other uses, is crucial for upscaling. Therefore, this project aims to develop innovative ways of cultivating Ulva floating in the open ocean using novel free floating growing techniques, efficient seeding procedures, and containment systems in off-shore waters. Using a biorefinery approach, we aim to characterise new compounds and valorise the complete seaweed biomass and its chemical ingredients. The commercial value of these products will also be investigated with a group of selected industry stakeholders. With their feedback, the social perception of off-shore seaweed aquafarming and its contribution to ecosystem services will be investigated within the framework of the SDGs and PORs.

Team:

AWI: Mar Fernández Méndez (lead), Laurie C. Hofmann, Matthew J. Slater, Wolf Isbert

GEOMAR: Deniz Tasdemir

FZJ: Ulrich Schurr

Participating Centers:

Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine research (AWI)

GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel

Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ)

SOLVe: SOLar and Volcanic Fingerprints in past and future Climates

SOLVe investigates the fingerprints of extreme solar/volcanic events in changing climates over the last 42 millennia, as well as their potential modulation in a future hothouse state. The project will evaluate the physical pathways of extreme solar and volcanic events, conduct a comprehensive regional risk assessment, and quantify their uncertainty range against the backdrop of future anthropogenic climate change.

Lead: Florian Adolphi (AWI), Tobias Spiegl (AWI) , Wenjuan Huo (GEOMAR)

Solar activity and volcanic eruptions provide natural forcing variations that influence past, present, and future climates. The Earth-system response to these forcings, however, may be different for different climate states as they include dynamic modulations of the prevailing atmospheric and oceanic conditions in which extreme solar and volcanic events unfold. Furthermore, extreme solar energetic particle events have been detected in proxy archives that may represent serious hazards for our technological society if they were to occur in the future.

In this project, we aim to investigate how extreme solar/volcanic events manifest themselves in a "changing" Earth-system by modelling their impact on climate dynamics and atmospheric chemistry under glacial, mid-Holocene, present and future conditions. We furthermore investigate the sensitivity of cosmogenic radionuclide deposition, i.e., the proxies used for reconstruction of past solar activity and extreme events, under these conditions, improving the reliability of the forcing reconstructions themselves.

The project will significantly advance our comprehension of complex feedbacks related to Earth-system changes. SOLVe will establish an uncertainty range for future climate projections by leveraging cutting-edge climate and hydrological models to analyze natural/anthropogenic meteorological, hydrological, and radiative extremes and hazards.

Team:

AWI: Florian Adolphi (lead), Tobias Spiegl, Gerrit Lohmann

GEOMAR: Wenjuan Huo, Stephanie Fiedler

FZJ: Michaela I. Hegglin

Hereon: Eduardo Zorita

GFZ: Sanja Panovska, Max Arthus Schanner

UFZ: Stephan Thober

KIT: Miriam Sinnhuber

Participating Centers:

Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine research (AWI)

GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel

Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ)

Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon

GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences

Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)

InnoPool Projects (2022-2024)

CASCO - Risk workflow for cascading and compounding hazards in coastal urban areas

In CASCO we are developing integrated methods and models for multi-hazard risk assessment of coastal urban areas, subject to extreme compounding and/or cascading geophysical and climatic events. Our aim is to define solid workflows that simulate the full risk chain, from geophysical and climatic hazards to impacts on the population and the built environment. Our case-study scenarios are set in Sicily, Italy, around Mt. Etna and the Straits of Messina.

Contakt: Cecilia Nievas (GFZ)

CASCO website

High CO2 - Metabolic responses and bioeconomic opportunities

The main goals of the project are to study physiological adaptation of microbial communities and individual microbes to very high CO2 concentrations and explore microbial utilization of CO2 for establishing CO2-based bioeconomic value chains. We will use existing drill core samples from the Eger Rift (ER, terrestrial site, Czech Republic) and samples from the Grimsey Hydrothermal Field (GHF, marine site, north of Iceland) – two sites exhibiting extreme levels of the greenhouse gas CO2. As the composition of microbial communities depends on the available substrates to generate energy and biomass, the study of the “background” mineralogy is also required to understand complex interactions of biological and geochemical processes to get a comprehensive picture of the coupling between biosphere and geosphere and assess the potential of biological and mineral resources.

Contact: Jens Kallmeyer (GFZ)

By integrating expertise from different scientific fields of the involved partner institutes (geophysics ↔ mineralogy ↔ chemistry ↔ microbiology ↔ bioinformatics ↔ bioengineering), the project aims to generate a holistic understanding of a relevant Earth system, as formulated in the general program outline of “Changing Earth”. More specifically, the project will address central research questions of thematic cluster 2, as the studies aim to explore the biological resources evolved in the CO2-rich geological sites ER and GHF as basis to develop biotechnological processes using CO2 as substrate for microbially synthesized products. The project will thus, investigate potential innovative approaches to reduce the carbon footprint. Furthermore, investigations at the GHF can help to better understand the role of CO2-rich fluids in the formation of marine mineral resources.

P-LEACH - Impacts on ecosystem functions and human health by environmental plastics and associated chemicals

P-LEACH assesses the complexity of plastic-associated chemicals and their impact on ecosystem functions and human health. Plastics form a new habitat for colonization (“plastisphere”) within ecosystems, and their weathering leads to fragmentation and leaching of chemicals, including harmful additives (e.g. plasticizers, bisphenols, metals). The multidisciplinary consortium is jointly characterizing these chemicals and their synergistic effects on ecosystem functions with a focus on microbial geochemical cycles in realistic aquatic environments along the land-coast-ocean continuum and at hot spots (German Bight, North Atlantic and North Pacific Gyre). P-LEACH also addresses human health effects using human cell lines, simulated gastrointestinal passage and human tissue.

Contact: Annika Jahnke (UFZ) | Gunnar Gerdts (AWI)

P-LEACH website

SCENIC - Storyline scenarios of extreme weather, climate, and environmental events along with their impacts in a warmer world

The main goal of the project is to develop and apply a novel storyline approach to examine how extreme events would unfold in different climates, thereby complementing classical climate scenario methods. Furthermore, novel ways of communicating uncertain are enabled by differentiating between dynamic (high uncertainty) and thermodynamic drivers of change. The results make climate change and its impacts much more tangible, thus aiding adaptation and mitigation efforts.

Contact: Helge Goessling (AWI)

More about SCENIC

InnoPool projects

more about the financing of the projects

InnoPool projects (2025-2027)

ACTUATE: climate Adaption sCenarios To redUce the impActs of exTreme Events

more about ACTUATE

AGRIO: Effect of anthropogenic modifications and climate change on greenhouse gas emissions along the river-ocean continuum

more about AGRIO

AI MareExplore: Utilizing AI for marine enzyme discovery to address human-made grand challenges

more about AI MareExplore

CSponge: Landscapes as Carbon Sponges – Towards long-term net-negative land use Program Objectives

more about CSponge

D-Twins: Digital Twins for Critical Zones under Climate Change

more about D-Twins

EXTREME-ADAPT: Quantifying the effect of adaptation measures on spatiotemporal changes in flood and drought risk

more about EXTREME-ADAPT