Wolfgang Kießling traces Earth’s history through layers of fossils. The data he uncovers together with his team serves to create a reliable database for climate research, opening up opportunities for nature-based conservation solutions.
Biodiversity researchers develop mechanistic simulation models to unravel the processes influencing biodiversity origin, maintenance and dynamics across space and time, from individuals to entire ecosystems.
Scientists at the University of Bayreuth are investigating how extreme weather events affect biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Together with their international partners, they study the local impacts of global climate change.
Although more than half of the world’s rivers have been altered by human activity and climate change, the floodplain ecosystems along the Naryn River in Kyrgyzstan remain largely untouched.
SNSB and LMU Paleontologists identify a new species of predatory dinosaur from the Cretaceous period in North Africa, around 95 million years old. What makes this discovery so special is that the original fossil from Egypt was completely destroyed 80 years ago, during World War II. For their work, the researchers analyzed previously unknown archival photographs of the dinosaur skeleton from the period before 1944. The findings are published in the scientific journal PLoS ONE.
Mountain meadows are unique ecosystems. A research team led by the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has now discovered that climate change reduces the humus content as well as the nitrogen stores in the grassland soils of the Alps and disturbs the soil structure. Organic fertilization, for example with liquid manure, can compensate this loss of soil organic matter to some extent.
In a groundbreaking study, researchers at the University of Bayreuth have gained new insights in the field of high-pressure carbon chemistry: They synthesized two new carbides – compounds of carbon and another chemical element – with unique structures. The results may provide an unexpected explanation of wide spread of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in Universe.
The Indian subcontinent is likely to experience an increasing number of extreme weather events in future. The fertile and densely populated plain around the Indus and Ganges rivers is therefore likely to become a climate change hotspot, which could have severe consequences for several hun-dred million people. This is the conclusion of a study conducted by re-searchers from the Indian Institute of Technology and the University of Augsburg, which has been published in the Journal of Hydrometeorology.
The influence of humans is causing originally diverse ecosystems around the world to to become increasingly similar. Scientists in an international research collaboration have uncovered this phenomenon, with their findings recently published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
In a groundbreaking piece of research, scientists have synthesised long-sought carbon nitrogen compounds and unlocked the potential of carbon nitrides as a new class of superhard multifunctional materials that could rival diamond. The work has now been published in the journal Advanced Materials.