1976 - 2011
The project aimed to date paleoenvironmental archives (sediments, tree rings, water, speleothems) with the highest possible temporal resolution and to investigate and document abrupt climate fluctuations in the past. The main goal was the reconstruction of global and regional climate changes over the last 10,000 and 300,000 years. The information developed in the project is relevant for understanding the processes that govern the climate and for validating existing climate models. It used methods such as radiocarbon dating (14C), thorium-uranium (Th/U), beryllium-10 (10Be), electron spin resonance (ESR), as well as mass spectrometric analyses of the isotopic composition of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. The research institute worked very closely and successfully with geoscientific institutes in Germany.
Chairman of the Commission
Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Egon Althaus
Head of Research Centre
Prof. Dr. Augusto Mangini
Employees
- Holger Braun
- René Eichstädter
- Jens Fohlmeister
- Dr. Bernd Kromer
- Jörg Lippold
- Christian Mühlinghaus
- Daniela Polag
- Dr. Denis Scholz
- Dr. Andrea Schröder-Ritzrau
- Sahra Talamo
- Karoline Thomas
- Nicole Vollweiler
- Sebastian Welk
Further information about the research institute can be found at Datierte Speleotheme - Archive der Paläoumwelt (external link) and at Institut für Umweltphysik (external link) of Heidelberg University.