Program

Vision

With the program “Changing Earth – Sustaining our Future" we will lay the path towards a future Earth that can sustain human society and the biosphere as a whole.

Mission

• Gain a holistic understanding of the changing Earth system, the dynamics, feedbacks and interactions of its compartments

• Provide actionable knowledge that can be used for a transformation towards a sustainable management of planet Earth

Grand Challenges

The Program will conduct solution-oriented, systemic research within the context of five overarching grand challenges

• climate change with an emphasis on the drivers as well as the impacts it will have on natural and human systems, including regional manifestations and extreme events,

• risks for human habitats and activities arising from Solid Earth dynamics,

• threatened ecosystems, biodiversity and biogeochemical cycles as foundations of vital ecosystem services,

• dwindling natural resources as the limiting factor for societal development globally,

• the need to preserve or achieve a good quality of the human environment with an emphasis on air quality, reduced pollutants exposure and livable, sustainable cities.

Ten Program Objectives 2022

The ten Program Objectives constitute the scientific mission of the program and serve both to integrate our scientific activities and as a measuring stick for their impact with regard to societal benefits.

In their entirety, these objectives set out to lay the path towards a future Earth that can sustain human society and the biosphere as a whole.

Provide improved quantitative forecasts of weather, atmospheric composition, and seasonal extremes by extending the practical limits of predictability based on advanced modeling, data assimilation, and observational capabilities. The focus will be on regional to local scales as the basis for better informing emergency measures and climate change adaptation (T1 T2 T3 T4 T5 T7).

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Mitigate urban climate change risks and increase the adaptive capacities and resilience of urban areas. This encompasses developing proposals that i) enable urban spaces to cope with multi-hazards and climate risks, ii) provide healthy environments for their inhabitants, and iii) develop novel technological and system solutions for infrastructure management (T1 T3 T4 T5 T7 T8 T9).

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Synthesize data, processes, and their multiple interactions, models, and forecasts as well as the theory of biodiversity change and the consequences for ecosystem functions and services. The main common target is to explore, derive, and design solutions for sustainable use of marine and terrestrial ecosystems under the conditions of global and climate change (T4 T5 T6 T7 T9).

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Develop solutions for a more sustainable, climate-resilient, and climate-protective production and consumption contributing to food/feed and water security and quality. The focus will be on a nested approach optimizing biological resources for breeding and production systems with stewardship to terrestrial, atmospheric and marine natural resources and on sustainable land management in rural and urban areas (T1 T4 T5 T6 T7 T9).

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Establish sustainable options with regard to the use of natural resources in demand by industry and society. The focus will be on solutions towards resourcing, production, and processing that may contribute to the vision of a circular economy by technical, social, and economic opportunities (T4 T5 T6 T7 T8 T9).

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Organize coherent concepts for understanding and assessing the interaction between environmental pollution and human and ecological health across diverse settings to overcome current fragmented ‘silo’ approaches and provide options for solution-oriented management strategies towards sustainable chemical use in a non-toxic environment (T1 T4 T5 T6 T7 T9).

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Recent Highlights

Ancient DNA from the sea floor reveals long-term responses of Arctic marine ecosystems to climate transitions

Marine ecosystem shifts with deglacial sea-ice loss inferred from ancient DNA shotgun sequencing

Sea ice is a key factor for the functioning and services provided by polar marine ecosystems. Here, shotgun metagenomics of marine sedimentary ancient DNA was used off Kamchatka covering the last ~20,000 years to trace shifts from a sea ice-adapted late-glacial ecosystem to an ice-free Holocene. Continuing sea-ice decline on the northern Bering Sea shelf might impact on carbon export and disrupt benthic food supply and could allow for a northward expansion of salmon and Pacific herring.

Field experiment shows that competition for light is the key mechanism driving loss of plant diversity under eutrophication and lack of grazing.

The importance of light for grassland plant diversity

Study published in NATURE

Global and regional stressors affect planktonic communities

Global Warming Reaches Central Greenland

New Project “Advancing Subseasonal PredIctions at Reduced computational Effort” (ASPIRE)

Making Weather Forecasts More Precise and More Efficient

Program Structure

Nine research Topics and their project-type Subtopics form the structural backbone of the Program. Topics are designed for high thematic coherence, communicable missions, multidisciplinarity and complementarity across centers.

Cross-Cutting Activities build the bridge to other Research Fields and promote thematic profiling and networking between topics

The research data management is consolidated in the DataHub which provides: overarching data portal, digitalization for scientific workflows including data flows, thematic viewers for different stake-holders, support of science-to-science networks

Innopool projects serves to strengthen the cooperation between the centers by funding of new innovative ideas in 3-year projects

SynCom is designed as an overarching synthesis and communication platform for the Earth and Environment Research Field where scientists study our planet comprehensively within nine topics

AWI, GEOMAR and GFZ are responsible for the operation of seven large user facilities infrastructures: research stations, aircraft, research vessels, and a Modular Earth Science Infrastructure (MESI).

General Assembly 2023 - in Karlsruhe (15.-16. May)

Two days with an engaging program, interesting research presented during the talks, poster and breakout sessions and a new format of an Ideas Market with insightful discussions - with a very positive atmosphere and collaborative spirit. Presentations by Early Career Researchers and their work, learning more about the InnoPool-projects and the progress of SynCom. Back-to-back with the meeting of the Strategic Advisory Board.