26.01.2015: Two research grants from the European Research Council ERC awarded to GFZ scientists.

Not one but two GFZ-scientists successfully applied for the well-endowed ERC Consolidator Grant and now will be funded for five years each with up to two million euros. The GFZ Executive Board sincerely congratulated both grantees. The honored scientists are Dr. Thomas Walter, GFZ-section "Physics of Earthquakes and Volcanoes", and Dr. Dirk Sachse from the „Geomorphology” section. Dr. Walter receives the grant for his research project VOLCAPSE, for an improved risk assessment of volcanic eruptions, Dr. Sachse for his research project STEEPclim, which aims to a better understanding of past climate induced changes in the water cycle on the European continent.

With an ERC Consolidator Grant scientists in their mid-career phase are supported whose research shows to be of high potential. The ERC Grant is highly competitive and given to excellent scientists at a stage at which they are consolidating their own independent research teams and programmes. The ERC programme supports fundamental as well as pioneering research and is open to all fields of research.

The VOLCAPSE project of Dr. Walter and his team adds to a better risk assessment of volcanic eruptions at the interface of fundamental research and application: "Active volcanoes are difficult to investigate and to monitor. Their hot emissions are dangerous to deal with not only for their general surrounding but especially for investigating scientists." Ash emissions often hinder a direct view on an active volcanoe, falling stones and pyroclastic flows are a hazard to life and infrastructure. For the new project, radar satellites and camera networks are installed. In combination with conventional sensoring methods this approach allows for an early warning of volcanic eruptions and to determine the hazardeous potential of an eruption.

With the project STEEPclim Dr. Sachse and his team work on a better understanding of regional climate changes and their impact on the water cycle during the end of the last glacial period (15.000-10.000 years ago): "Regional changes in the water cycle under climate change scenarios are still poorly understood, despite their importance for ecosystems und human society". With new molecular and isotope geochemical methods the team will reconstruct and quantitatify hydrological changes from annually laminated sediments of ten European lakes that will for the first time give information about spatial patterns of past hydrological changes throughout the European continent. Such data and a better mechanistic understanding of the drivers of change will be essential to validate climate model predictions of future climate change.