Microplastic particles can be deposited in river floodplains and penetrate into deeper areas of the soil. The number of particles identified depends in particular on surface plant cover, the frequency of flooding, and soil properties. Researchers from the Universities of Bayreuth and Cologne determined this during investigations in the Rhine floodplain of Langel-Merkenich north of Cologne. The study, published in the journal "Science of the Total Environment", is the result of interdisciplinary cooperation in the DFG Collaborative Research Centre 1357 "Microplastics" at the University of Bayreuth.
Jules Verne could not even dream of this: A research team from the University of Bayreuth, together with international partners, has pushed the boundaries of high-pressure and high-temperature research into cosmic dimensions. For the first time, they have succeeded in generating and simultaneously analyzing materials under compression pressures of more than one terapascal (1,000 gigapascals). Such extremely high pressures prevail, for example, at the center of the planet Uranus; they are more than three times higher than the pressure at the center of the Earth. In Nature, the researchers present the method they have developed for the synthesis and structural analysis of novel materials.
Dr. Danilo Di Genova from the Bavarian Research Institute of Experimental Geochemistry & Geophysics (BGI) at the University of Bayreuth has been awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council. His NANOVOLC project will receive funding of around two million euros over the next five years. It investigates magma viscosity, which is of great relevance for assessing hazards that may emerge from active volcanoes around the world.
The IT Center of the Bavarian Natural History Collections (SNSB) presents its new app 'DiversityNaviKey' (DNK) – a tool for reliable identification of natural science objects. The application is based on scientific data sources managed by the established database system of the SNSB, Diversity Workbench.
Floods do not stop at borders. That is why, funded by the EU, an international research consortium including the Floodplain Institute Neuburg of the Catholic Univerity Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (KU) has investigated the potential of the renaturization of Danube floodplains in reducing the impact of extreme floods. Having examined five pilote regions, the researchers concluded that floodplains have a verifiable effect in capping flood peaks and shifting water runoff.
Professor Christine Schmitt, geographer at the University of Passau, is part of an international research team that proves – in a “Nature” article – that tropical African mountain forests store more carbon than previously thought.
Temperatures on Earth have had a significant influence on the course of evolution. A particularly high number of new species of marine animals emerged after geologically short cooling periods that had already been preceded by a much longer cooling period. This is the conclusion reached by researchers from the Universities of Bayreuth and Erlangen-Nuremberg in a new study that has now been published in the journal PNAS. By combining empirical data and computer simulations, they have found that the influence of rapid climate change on biodiversity is significantly influenced by longer-lasting climate trends in previous periods of the Earth’s history.
Geologists at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) joined forces with researchers from France, Berlin, and Portugal to investigate the extent to which the growth of belemnites and changes to their appearance depend on ecological reactions and whether these changes are evidence of environmental crises that could have a serious impact on the climate in future.
Plants absorb carbon dioxide from the air and fix it in biomass. Climate extremes such as droughts and heat waves lead to lower plant growth (primary production). This means that less CO2 is sequestered from the atmosphere. An international study led by researchers from the University of Augsburg shows that, especially in the northern latitudes, negative extremes in plant growth increased by 10.6 percent between 1982-1998 and 2000-2016. International research team publishes study in the journal ‘Nature Climate Change’, which also shows consequences for the carbon cycle as well as for agriculture
Paleontologists of the Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geologie (SNSB-BSPG) examined the remains of the long-necked dinosaur Patagosaurus fariasi (175 million years) from Argentina as part of a re-description. These investigations have great significance for the understanding of sauropod evolution. The researchers published their results in the scientific journal Geodiversitas.
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