Most countries are by now committed to the Paris Agreement, which deals mainly with the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and financing thereof. Crucial pillars driving this greenhouse gas diminution are renewable energies and e-mobility. As in any industrial revolution, this fundamental shift from “fossil energy” towards renewable energies and e-mobility, requires new technologies and associated new suite of raw materials, without which this shift will not be possible or at least significantly delayed.

Energy storage is one of the key challenges to a successful shift. One way to store energy are new generation batteries. The growing need for energy storage for e-mobility and other battery-intense applications has created a large interest in the key battery commodity Li as well as other critical raw materials like Ni, Co, Cu and graphite. Current forecasts assume that Li-ion battery technologies will be the prevalent battery technology for the foreseeable future. Public domain data suggest very significant increases in commodity demand, if 100 % e-mobility is to be achieved. Considering current market volumes, demands for Li and Co will increase far over 1500 %, while demands for REE and graphite will exceed 500 %. Demand on Cu will moderately increase. In contrast, need for steel and PGM may decrease.

This extraordinary strong growth of demands for these critical raw materials used in e-mobility have raised concerns regarding long-term supply. Exploration, mining and processing are challenged to adapt and to produce these commodities in order to achieve this new industrial revolution.

A 50-element stream sediment geochemistry survey with a sample density of one sample per km² shows anomalies for a number of high technology metals, including Sn, W and the battery metals Co and Li. Apart from the anomalies associated with known deposits, low-level anomalies of Li and Co are widespread in anchimetamorphic to greenschist facies metasedimentary rocks. Li anomalies are prominent in Phycoden Group phyllites in the Vogtland and parts of the Frauenbach and Thum Groups in the West Erzgebirge Transverse zone. Co is enriched in the Brunndöbra Subformation (Klingenthal Group) where it is probably associated with Besshi-type massive sulfide mineralisations.

We use self-organizing maps (SOM), a type of artificial neural network (ANN), for data analysis and data fusion with geophysical and structural-lithologic data to identify areas of interest for further exploration. Using known deposits as training data, the SOM-transformed data are converted to mineral predictive maps with a multi layer perceptron, a different type of ANN. This combined machine learning approach overcomes some of the problems in applying ANNs to mineral predictive mapping, in particular the problem of imbalanced training data.

The paper has been compiled in the frame of "NEXT - New EXploration Technologies" project. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 776804.

Eastern Canada hosts several occurrences of lithium pegmatite, which have recently come into the focus of exploration activities and detailed studies. Driven by the current and expected future demand for Li, the mineral occurrences are targeted by exploration companies.

This area in Canada is currently in the focus for targeting the mineral occurrences of lithium pegmatite.

The majority of the pegmatite are hosted in metasediments or biotite-rich granite. In the more northern part the host rock becomes also greenstone. These pegmatite are very old up to 2.6 billion years old.

The latest update of the exploration data and statistical modelling combined with a more detail mine plan some new results will be presented for some of the Georgia lake pegmatite.

The lithium mineralisation in these pegmatite is in many cases the spodumen. This light green pyroxene is often bid as an finger and builds up to 20 % of the volume of the pegmatite. In addition, previous work also identified beryl, columbite, molybdenite, amblygonite, apatite, and bityite, enhancing the Li and rare metals potential of the area.

The pegmatite has different thickness and length. The bigger ones are up to a mile long and in some cases up to 20 m wide. Sometimes they split up in parallel dikes. The Li2O contend of the pegmatite varying from 0 up to 2,7 %. During the investigation some million tonnes of resources were defined with an average Li2O contend of around 1 %.

More than 70% of the global lithium resources are not solid minerals but dissolved salts within continental brines or geothermal waters. Critical issues in the exploitation of such deposit include low Li concentrations and high level of impurities that need to be discarded.

One of the most important methods for Li acquisition from brines is ion-exchange. In this perspective, the use of zeolitic materials as ion-exchangers in lithium extractions can potentially represent a fast and cheap alternative to traditional methods. In ion-exchange processes, the anionic charge of the host structure is compensated by Li⁺ cations. Because of the high charge density, the Li⁺ cations can interact relatively strongly with the host framework and therefore significantly distort it. We examined this effect at the atomic scale and highlight the structural distortion upon Li-exchange in vanadosilicate zeotypes. Using X-ray diffraction, we were able to precisely locate the Li cations within the framework and characterize the structure. Differences in the position and bond energy of the cationic sites strongly affected the extent and kinetics of the cation exchange. Thus, we observe Li⁺ exclusion at specific exchange sites. This appears to be directly linked to the coordination requirements of the Li-cations with the framework oxygen atoms. Our findings might contribute to a rational design and functionalization of zeolitic material to efficiently extract lithium from brines.

With a world-class graphite project in Tanzania (East Africa), The Pula Group, LLC is committed to a greener future. The high-quality graphite mineralization includes jumbo flakes developed to a depth of 60 meters, a key driver ensuring the project economics are strong. The Pula graphite deposits are extensions of the Nachu graphite deposits. PGP is taking a modular approach to mining and processing graphite, an innovative and efficient approach to optimize the success of the project during the ramp-up phase. This adaptive approach to mining helps mitigate economic risk and the "too big to fail" attitude that has sunk many large-scale mining projects. The PGP model provides a clear way to reignite the capacity for junior mining companies to activate the sector with minimal risk and maximum benefit to communities.

Along with the high caliber of its Tanzanian graphite opportunity, The Pula Group, a U.S.-based company, is setting high ethical standards in the mining sector. The Group's subsidiary for developing the project is Pula Graphite Partners (PGP), a 50-50 joint venture with local strategic partners. Even during the exploration phase, PGP already has a superior track record of philanthropy.

Reconstruction of denudation rates through time is an important task to quantify and understand the impact of climate on landscape evolution. Cosmogenic nuclides have been widely used as a tool to infer denudation rates at the watershed scale from both river sediments and past stratigraphic records. Here, we analyze the in-situ ¹⁰Be cosmogenic concentration over the last 75 ka in sediments cores that were collected offshore the Var River (Western Mediterranean Sea).

We present 26 ¹⁰Be paleo denudation rates ranging from 0.15 ± 0.01 and 1.26 ± 0.16 mm yr⁻¹. At the exception of the LGM period, the ¹⁰Be paleo denudation rates are similar to these of today in the Var (0.24 ± 0.04 mm yr⁻¹). However, during the LGM, paleo denudation rates were 2 to 3 times higher than today, suggesting that glaciers may have played a role. To investigate this sharp increase in denudation rates, we use a mass balance approach to differentiate the glacial from the fluvial component of denudation rates. The resulting average glacial erosion rate during the LGM is 1.5 (+0.9 / -1.0) mm yr⁻¹, roughly four times above the value of 0.4 (+0.4 / -0.5) mm yr⁻¹ obtained during MIS 3-4 (29 - 71 ka) Our data suggest that climatic variations may only strongly affect denudation beyond a certain threshold, probably controlled by glacier dynamics, the duration of glacial advances, and temperature-driven processes such as frost cracking. Our study indicates that the denudation response to Quaternary glaciations is complex and nonlinear in glaciated areas.

Debris-covered glaciers are fed from steep bedrock hillslopes that tower above the ice, so-called headwalls. Recent observations in high-alpine glacial environments suggest that rock walls are increasingly destabilized due to climate warming. An increase in debris delivery to glacier surfaces will modify glacial mass balances, as surface debris cover impacts on the melt behavior of the ice underneath. Consequently, we expect that the response of debris-covered glaciers to climate change is likely linked to how headwall retreat responds to climate change.

As debris is deposited on the ice surface along the sides of valley glaciers it is passively transported downglacier on and in the ice. Where glaciers join it is merged to form medial moraines. Due to the conveyor-belt-nature of glacier ablation zones, debris tends to be older downglacier and, hence, systematic downglacier-sampling of medial moraines holds the potential to assess rates of headwall retreat through time.

In order to quantify headwall retreat rates, we measured the concentration of in situ-produced cosmogenic ¹⁰Be in debris samples collected on downglacier profiles along parallel medial moraines from a partly debris-covered Swiss glacier. Our results indicate that indeed nuclide concentrations along the medial moraines vary systematically, being higher for older downglacier deposits and lower for younger upglacier deposits. This variation cannot be explained by additional nuclide accumulation during transport alone. Instead we propose that ongoing ice cover retreat across deglaciating headwalls since the end of the Little Ice Age and the exposure of newly eroding bedrock surfaces may explain recently decreasing ¹⁰Be concentrations.

Quantifying carbonate denudation and the partitioning between chemical and mechanical surface lowering in karstic areas is challenging. Here we present a compilation of ³⁶Cl denudation rates from alluvial samples in the Mediterranean and combine these with chemical weathering rates derived from water chemistry and satellite-dervied runoff data. We calculate mechanical erosion as the difference between the total denudation from cosmogenic ³⁶Cl measurements and the chemical weathering rates. Our results show a dominance of mechanical erosion in Mediterranean carbonate regions. We observe a strong scaling between mechanical erosion, catchment steepness and total denudation rate, but a weak scaling with chemical weathering. This implies that slope dependent erosion gets progressively more important with increasing denudation rates and therefore is linked to tectonic uplift.

Significant amounts of chemical weathering can bias cosmogenic denudation rate measurements. Therefore, we investigate this potential bias for the calculation of ³⁶Cl denudation rates in the reported Meditteranean sites, but find a limited influence.

These findings support a conceptual model of a dissolution speed limit in carbonates due to available water and acid such that areas of high local uplift require substantial mechanical erosion to balance uplift and form steep slopes. In contrast, areas experiencing low uplift rates with sufficient water availability (e.g. humid climate) can balance uplift entirely with dissolution resulting in subdued carbonate landscapes. This feedback explains why Meditterranean carbonate mountains are often high and steep compared to oher rock units, whereas carbonates in humid temperate climates form the subdued parts of the landscape.

The supply of fresh minerals to Earth’s surface by erosion is thought to modulate global climate by removing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) through silicate weathering. In turn, weathering of accessory carbonate and sulfide minerals is a geologically-relevant CO₂ source, which may dampen or reverse the effect of silicate weathering on climate. Although these weathering pathways commonly operate side by side, we lack quantitative constraints on their co-evolution across erosion-rate gradients. Using stream-water chemistry across a 3 order-of-magnitude erosion-rate gradient in shales and sandstones of southern Taiwan, here, we demonstrate that silicate, sulfide, and carbonate weathering are linked: Increasing sulfide oxidation generates sulfuric acid and boosts carbonate solubility whereas silicate weathering kinetics remain constant or even decline, perhaps due to buffering of the pH by carbonates. On timescales shorter than marine sulfide compensation, CO₂ emission rates from weathering in rapidly-eroding terrain are more than twice the CO₂ sequestration rates in slow-eroding terrain. On longer timescales, CO₂ emissions are compensated, but CO₂ sequestration rates do not increase with erosion, in contrast to assumptions in carbon cycle models. We posit that these patterns are broadly applicable to many Cenozoic mountain ranges that expose dominantly siliciclastic metasediments.

Topography in fold-thrust belts over geologic time reflects the development of an orogenic Coulomb wedge that represents a balance of tectonic and erosional forcings. The establishment of critically tapered topography is generally viewed under two contrasting mechanical frameworks: (i) shortening and rock uplift are occurring everywhere suggesting an orogenic wedge under mechanical failure everywhere; and (ii) rock displacement takes place along discrete fault planes, including the translation of uplifted topography laterally. Here we investigate whether the topography in central Nepal is maintained by a combination of rock uplift during sequential fault activity, the lateral translation of topography over ramp-flat subsurface geometries, and alternating phases of hinterland incision during out-of-sequence faulting and deformation front activity; if this is the case, then erosional efficacy dynamically varies along the orogenic wedge, in contrast to a wedge under mechanical failure everywhere. We test this hypothesis by employing a structural-kinematic model of the Neogene fold-thrust belt evolution of central Nepal and integrate this into a surface processes model applying end-member climatic scenarios, i.e., uniform precipitation and climatic change over geologic time. Model output is validated by comparing predicted geomorphic metrics with observed ones. Our results indicate a dynamic variability of erosional efficacy that promotes the interplay of two modes of orogenic wedge behaviour: phases of lateral translation of uplifted topography and in-sequence propagation of deformation fronts, and phases of hinterland incision during out-of-sequence fault activity.

The shape preferred orientation and connectivity of pores in reservoir rocks largely controls fluid migration properties, for example, by defining preferred flow directions. An accurate determination of preferred flow directions, observed as permeability anisotropy, is an integral part of reservoir characterization, due to profound effects on fluid migration. Numerous research fields, including groundwater studies, hydrocarbon exploitation, contamination mitigation, and CO2 sequestration, therefore seek methods to reliably characterize pore fabrics and permeability anisotropy. Many traditional methods face trade-offs between sample size and resolution, and measurements of permeability anisotropy require several oriented cores, where anisotropy may be masked by core-scale heterogeneity, and assumptions on the fabric orientation need to be made when less than six cores are measured. The magnetic pore fabric method has the potential to overcome these difficulties, and has shown promising empirical relationships to both the preferred orientation of pores, and permeability anisotropy. Magnetic pore fabrics are determined by impregnating rock with ferrofluid, and then measuring the anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility. These measurements provide a full 3D average fabric measure from a single core. So far, interpretation was compromised by large variability in the empirical relationships published in different studies. Here, experimental developments, and a conceptual and numerical model are presented that enable more thorough and quantitative interpretation of magnetic pore fabrics.

The pore space in siliciclastic rocks is one of the most important petrophysical properties in reservoir rock characterization. Of particular interest is the 3D distribution of pore space and permeability for the purpose of reservoir model development. We used a magnetic technique to determine the preferred orientation of the pore space. The approach is based on the injection of a magnetic ferrofluid, which is a stable colloidal suspension of approx. 10 nm-sized magnetite particles, into a rock specimen. The anisotropy of magnetic ferrofluid susceptibility (AMFFS) is then measured for its AMS and the orientation was compared with the rock’s AMS.

We used red Permo-Triassic sandstones of different Buntsandstein and Rotliegend facies, which represent Europe’s highest geothermal water and hydrocarbon reservoir potential. The used porosity methods were helium pycnometry, mercury injection porosimetry, computer tomography and ferrofluid injection. Although the used methods show a strong deviation for single samples, which is related to the different pore size ranges for which each method provide reliable information, the trends are comparable. The computer tomography showed pore space network to be parallel with the bedding of the sandstone. The AMFFS is also mostly similar to the rock’s AMS with principal minimum susceptibility axis normal to the bedding. However, small deviations of AMS and AMFFS axis orientation occur. This deviation could indicate that the ferrofluid fabric is related to a special size of pores. Further investigations are needed to verify this hypothesis.

Pyrolysis experiments and calculated thermostability diagrams show that iron bearing minerals (< 60nm) can be produced inorganically during oil formation in the ‘oil-kitchen’ or be precipitated in the reservoir via alteration or replacement of existing minerals. Here we use this observation to find a magnetic proxy that can be used to identify hydrocarbon fluid contacts by determining the morphology, abundance, mineralogy and size of the magnetic minerals present in reservoirs. We address this by examining core samples from the Tay Sandstone Member in the Western Central Graben in the North Sea.

The magnetic properties of core samples from the study area were determined using room-temperature measurements on a Vibrating Sample Magnetometer (VSM), low-temperature (0-300K) measurements on aMagnetic Property Measurement System (MPMS) and high-temperature (300-973K) measurements on a Kappabridge susceptibility meter while hydrocarbon fluid contacts were determined using wireline logs.

We observed magnetic enhancements at both gas-oil and oil-water contacts that are detectable both through magnetic susceptibility measurements and magnetic hysteresis measurements. This magnetic enhancement is due to the precipitation of new nanometric iron oxide (magnetite) and iron sulphide (greigite) phases. The magnetic enhancement may be caused by diagenetic changes or preferential biodegradation at the top of the oil column during early filling and at the oil water contact.

Minerals magnetics has been proposed as a means of improving our understanding of petroleum systems. We have carried out extensive rock magnetic experiments on core samples from the Tertiary reservoir sands of the Bittern and Pict Field, UK Central North Sea. This together with Petroleum Systems Modelling/Analysis has revealed the potential to characterise hydrocarbon migration pathway and fill-pattern through siderite identification. We have also suggested a plausible mechanism responsible for these observations. Furthermore, the presence of different flow zones or ‘compartments’ in petroleum reservoirs may also be identified through the distribution of magnetic minerals. In terms of ease of application in oil exploration and reservoir characterization, there is a potential to define this parameter very efficiently through the measurement of magnetic susceptibility.

Rocks are often subjected to dynamic stress that occurs during earthquakes, volcanic activity as well as human-induced activities. The aim of this study is to test if mechanical fatigue in rocks can be monitored by magnetic methods. For this purpose, the effect of cyclic-mechanical loading (150 + 30 MPa) on the magnetic susceptibility and its anisotropy of a magnetite-bearing ore with varying temperatures and environment was investigated. Our study shows that magnetic susceptibility decreases significantly (up to 23%) under air conditions and even in vacuum (up to 4 %) within the first ca. 1000 cycles. Further loading does not significantly affect the magnetic susceptibility which then remains more or less constant. However, a stronger decrease of susceptibility parameters is observed at higher temperatures. As magnetic susceptibility was measured after decompression of the loaded sample at room temperature, magnetostriction cannot be the reason for these changes. After cyclic loadings in air, the transformation of magnetite to hematite is the major mechanism affecting bulk magnetic susceptibility. The weak changes in magnetic susceptibility after vacuum loadings are related to the formation of damage and deformation structures observed on the surface of magnetite grains. We have shown that cyclic loading can change significantly the induced magnetization of a rock due to mineral transformation below < 1000 cycles and that mechanical fatigue, which is a precursor of the failure of a rock, is closely associated with these transformations. Therefore time-dependent magnetic susceptibility measurements can be used as a proxy parameter of mechanical fatigue.

Radiogenic strontium isotopes (⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr) of vein carbonates play a crucial role in the tectono-metamorphic study of fold-and-thrust belts and accretionary wedges and have been used to document fluid sources and fluxes, for example, along major fault zones. Moreover, the ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr ratios of vein carbonates can trace the diagenetic to metamorphic evolution of pore fluids entrapped in accreted sediments. Here we present ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr ratios of vein carbonates from the paleo-accretionary complex of the central European Alps (Glarus Alps, Switzerland) that formed during early stages of continental collision. We show that the vein carbonates trace the Sr isotopic evolution of pore fluids from an initial seawater-like signature towards the isotopic composition of the host rock. This relation allows us to constrain the diagenetic to low-grade metamorphic conditions of deformation events, including imbricate thrusting, folding, cleavage development, stratal disruption and tectonic transport of thrust slices, bedding-parallel shearing, and extensional vein-formation. Taken together, the strontium isotope systematics of vein carbonate provides new insights into the prograde to early retrograde tectonic evolution of Alpine accretionary complex and helps to understand aspects that are not sufficiently clear from traditional cross-cutting relationships.

The reaction of serpentinized peridotites with CO₂-bearing fluids to listvenite (quartz-carbonate rocks) requires massive fluid flux and maintained permeability despite volume increase. Here we investigate listvenites and serpentinites samples from Hole BT1B of the Oman Drilling Project to improve our understanding of the mechanisms and feedbacks of fracturing and vein formation during peridotite carbonation. The samples are characterized by a high abundance of magnesite veins which are often bundled into closely-spaced, parallel sets. Relative cross-cutting relationships suggest that these veins are among the earliest structures related to carbonation of serpentinite. These veins often show some features that are typical for antitaxial veins such as growth from a median line outwards. Their bisymmetric chemical zonation of variable Ca and Fe contents, a systematic distribution of SiO₂ and Fe-oxide inclusions in these zones, and cross-cutting relations with Fe-oxides and Cr-spinel suggest that they are micro-scale reaction fronts recording the replacement of serpentine by carbonate. Local dolomite precipitation and voids along the vein – wall rock interface suggest that the veins acted as a preferred fluid pathway also after the first fracturing formed the central parts of the zoned magnesite veins. The close spacing and (sub)parallel alignment of the veins points to preferential fracturing of the weaker wall rock, in line with the interpretation that the veins formed in a serpentine matrix. The zoned magnesite veins therefore record an early stage of fluid infiltration during listvenite formation, at which focused fluid flow was controlled to large parts by external tectonic stress.

The analysis of Coulomb stress changes has become an important tool for seismic hazard evaluation because such stress changes may trigger or delay next earthquakes. Processes that can cause significant Coulomb stress changes include coseismic slip, earthquake-induced poroelastic effects and transient postseismic processes such as viscoelastic relaxation. In this study, we use 2D finite-element models for intracontinental normal and thrust faults to investigate the spatial and temporal evolution and the interaction of pore fluid pressure changes and postseismic viscoelastic relaxation. In different experiments, we vary (1) the permeability of the upper or lower crust and (2) the viscosity of the lower crust or lithospheric mantle, while keeping the other parameters constant. The results show that the highest pore pressure changes occur within a distance of ~ 1 km around the lower fault tip. In the postseismic phase, the pore pressure relaxes depending on the permeability in the upper crust until the pore pressure reaches the initial pressure of the preseismic phase. For high permeabilities in the upper crust, postseismic velocities within a few kilometers around the fault reach around 120 mm/a and decrease rapidly with time, whereas for low permeabilities velocities remain lower over the years after the earthquake. Models with low viscosity of the lower crust show that postseismic viscoelastic relaxation and poroelastic effects overlap in the early postseismic phase and decrease gradually within a few years after the earthquake. Higher viscosities lead to lower velocities, that last for decades on scales of several tens of kilometers.

Information about the recent stress state of the upper crust is important for understanding tectonic processes and for the use of the underground in general. A currently important topic, the search for a radioactive waste deposit, illustrates this relevance, as the crustal stress state is decisive for the short and long-term safety of a possible repository. For example, the integrity of the host rock due to the activation or reactivation of faults and associated fluid pathways during.

However, the level of knowledge of the upper crustal stress field in Germany is quite low. The World Stress Map (WSM) and a new stress magnitude database give some insights, but only spatially unevenly distributed, often incomplete and rarely of good quality. Therefore, we present the first 3D geomechanical model of Germany that allows a comprehensive prediction of the complete stress tensor. The model covers an area of 1250 x 1000 km² and contains 20 units with individual rock properties (Young's modulus, Poisson's ratio and density). It is calibrated against the datasets of the WSM and the magnitude database. Our results are in good agreement with the orientation of the maximum horizontal stress and show a good fit regarding the magnitudes of the minimum and maximum horizontal stress.

The Zagros Mountain Front Flexure (MFF) makes a prominent topographic and structural step along the Zagros Fold-Thrust Belt that accommodates a significant amount of shortening between the Eurasian and Arabian plates. Here, the structural style below the MFF in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq was reconstructed using balanced cross-sections and forward modeling, and Late Pleistocene-Holocene fault-slip rates were calculated across several structures using luminescence dating of river terraces along the Greater Zab River. A balanced and retro-deformable cross-section for the NW Zagros reveals that reverse displacement on a basement fault underlying the MFF, along with fault-related folding above the Triassic detachment, is indispensable to explain the observed structural relief. The uplift rates of river terraces, obtained from their elevation and ages, indicate ongoing slip on faults when integrated with the kinematics of fault-related folds for the structures. The basement fault underlying the MFF accommodates 1.46±0.60 mm a^-1 of slip, while a more external basement fault further to the SW is accommodating less than 0.41±0.16 mm a^-1. Horizontal slip rates from detachment folding above the Triassic detachment in two anticlines (Sarta and Safin) within the Zagros Foothills are 0.40±0.10 and 1.24±0.36 mm a^-1, respectively. Balanced cross-section, distribution of river terraces, and regional topography indicate that basement thrusting, and ductile thickening of the crust are restricted to the NE parts of the belt, and the deformation is limited mainly to folding and thrusting of the sedimentary cover above a Triassic basal detachment there in the SW parts.

Tectonic faults are of great importance for many underground applications such as hydrocarbon extraction, geothermal operations or nuclear waste repositories. In particular, the fault reactivation potential is crucial in regards of safety and efficiency of these applications. Major influences on the reactivation potential are the contemporary tectonic stress field and changes to it due to anthropogenic activities. One measure of the reactivation potential of faults is the ratio of resolved shear stresses to normal stresses on the fault surface, the slip tendency. The components of the stress tensor required for slip tendency analysis have been provided by the 3D geomechanical numerical model of Germany and its adjacent regions of the SpannEnD project. The derived stresses are mapped onto selected faults in order to calculate their slip tendency.

As only a finite number of 3D fault geometries could be generated, criteria for the selection of faults relevant to the scope of the SpannEnD project were identified. Their application led to the selection of 60 faults in the model area. For the selected faults simplified geometries were created (fault set 1). For a subset of the selected faults, vertical profiles and seismic sections could be used to generate semi-realistic 3D fault geometries (fault set 2). Slip tendency calculations using the stress tensor from the SpannEnD model were performed for both 3D fault sets and allow for an assessment of the fault reactivation potential which can be compared with the distribution of seismicity.

Luminescence is the non-incandescent emission of light from materials excited by an electron beam. Electron irradiation raises sample electrons to an excited state, which then emit a photon as they return to a lower energy. Luminescence phenemona may be studied in several ways, including spectral and spatial methods. Whilst cathodolominescence (CL) has become an established method of analysis for Earth materials, other forms of luminescence in minerals should not be overlooked. Photoluminescence (PL) studies, for example, allow for emission and excitation spectroscopy to be examined in weak- to strongly luminescent minerals, such as wilmenite. In the case of quartz PL, emission spectroscopy investigations have shown that excitation at different wavelengths produces highly variable emission spectra that relate to one or more transitions for excitation. As the building blocks to rocks, minerals and the atoms or ions within preserve critical information concerning the conditions attending growth or subsequent evolution - thus, investigation of these can inform on the origin or surface/near surface interactions relating to environmental change. As a non-destructive technique used in the study of rare materials (e.g., Lunar meteorites) luminescence imaging and spectroscopy have the potential to help characterise, as well as, elucidate domains or reveal fine-scale features not resolvable by optical methods. Advances in instrumentation now permit the collection of multi-dimensional data sets (e.g., hyperspectral) that can be interrogated off-line. The simultaneous capture and interpretation of compositional and luminescence signals has the potential to greatly improve our understanding of causes of luminescence, be these trace activator or defect.

Zircon Raman dating is a debated concept in thermochronology. It is based on the disruption of the zircon lattice by α-disintegration of ²³⁸U, ²³⁵U, ²³²Th, and their daughter nuclides. This radiation damage leads to broadening of the Raman bands. A date is calculated from the measured Raman bandwidths, and the effective Uranium (eU) content, measured in the same spot. Radiation damage anneals at elevated temperatures; thus the Raman date is interpreted with regard to its closure temperature (T_c) as an event, cooling or mixed age, depending on the thermal history of the sample. We present zircon Raman ages calculated from the widths of the 439, 1008, and 356 cm^-1 Raman bands for samples with different thermal histories. We discuss: (1) criteria for evaluating the Raman data by inter-band comparison; (2) the effect of partial annealing on the dating results; (3) the spatial matching of Raman and eU microanalysis.

Raman spectroscopy is becoming an increasingly important investigative tool in modern geosciences. So it has been applied in the examination of a variety of materials, including meteoritic and igneous rocks, as well as natural and synthetic minerals and crystals.

This is not least due to the many advantages of Raman spectroscopy, like very fast measurements, small spot size or different samples consistency.

One main investigation area are meteorites, because new space mission programs to Moon and Mars are underway. In these new missions, robots are equipped with analytical instruments to probe the chemistry and constitution of the materials on the surface of the respective bodies. One of the promising mobile techniques is Raman spectroscopy. Therefore, the experience and measurement of comparable samples like meteorites, basalts or ophiolitic material helps us a lot. Several types of different meteorites have already been investigated here, for example, those recovered from the Neuschwanstein, Almahatta Sitta, Braunschweig or Tscheljabinsk fall. Furthermore, we started to investigate Meteorites from the Moon and Mars.

Raman methods can also help to study mineral compositions, because the spectra can aid in the classification, based upon crystal structure and mineral composition. In combination with electron microprobe, it is a perfect tool to characterize different polytypes and polymorphs. As such, it has been possible to distinguish between graphite, graphene and diamond within some of our meteorite samples, and between coesite, stishovite and other quartz polymorphs, present. These critical data provide pressure and temperature information for the meteorite and its parent body.

Effect of Co substitution in pyrite was investigated using a Raman microprobe. Textural appearance of Co-bearing pyrite was visualized by mapping method. The revealed Raman map tightly correlates with a Co distribution map obtained by electron microprobe and µ-energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence microscope. In addition, a strong influence on the pyrite spectra due to sample preparation was documented. The standard mechanical polishing caused highly broadened modes at upshifted frequencies, which could be avoided by analyzing of sample polished with Ar broad ion beam or non-polished cut sample. However, the effect of Co on pyrite spectra is independent of the sample preparation. Additionally, the Raman method has several advantages over other methods. For instance, It does not require sample preparation, vacuum chamber and wavelength-dispersive system and operates with a laser instead of X-ray. Thus, the Raman method can be used as a possible tool for differentiation of Co-bearing pyrite from pure one.

Three lacquer peel profiles were prepared from a copper tailings deposit in Central Chile. The peels were taken from two sides at varying depths of the tailings heap. Parallel to that, samples were taken from each layer within the peels for bulk XRF analysis and particle size analysis. The peels were analysed by Hyperspectral Imaging (HSI, VNIR- SWIR, 400 – 2500 nm wavelength) with the Specim SisuRock system and µXRF mapping using M4 Tornado Plus from Bruker for chemical comparison.

The lacquer peel method worked well for sandy tailings with the polyvinyl alcohol Mowiol as glue with a peel size of 50 x 30 cm. All peels were stable, transportable and ready to be measured by HSI after about one day of drying.

The HSI data shows that reflectance of the different material layers within the peels is correlated with particle size data from sieving (Camsizer, Retsch and Sedigraph, Micromeritics). This is important information for a possible reprocessing of copper sulfides, since tailings deposition works as a particle sorting process and, flotation efficiency depends on particle size. Furthermore, endmember classes were extracted from the HSI data using the Pixel Purity Index on lacquer profile 2, which were used to classify the remaining profiles. The HSI classification was registered to the µXRF mappings and the HSI classes were attributed the copper concentration from µXRF. With this information, zones of copper enrichment could be localized using the HSI data in combination with µXRF. This process is also applicable on tailings drill cores.

The “Green Future”; a concept of desirable European climate-neutral living conditions, which is the goal of the EU Green Deal means a huge increase in the use of mineral raw materials. Minerals are an essential component for many of today’s rapidly growing clean energy technologies – from wind turbines and electricity networks to electric vehicles. But ensuring that these and other key technologies can continue to rely on sufficient mineral supplies to support the acceleration of clean energy transitions is a significant and often-ignored challenge.

As an example, the frequency of new discoveries has fallen even with a significant increase in exploration budgets. Between 2007 and 2016, ~54B€ were spent for a return of 25B€ of gold - an unsustainable exercise! Therefore, a new way of approaching mineral exploration must be adopted and traditional methods of exploring for greenfield mineral deposits need to be rethought to cushion this trend.

The need to bring these deposits faster on-line in the value chains of the circular economy, and the transformation into green technology items, needs modern and updated tools. Data integration and geographic information system (GIS) based analyses, which can improve exploration and detection of mineral deposits in Europe and elsewhere, are among those tools. However, the use of new exploration techniques needs to be allied with new geological, geochemical, geophysical, and drilling data and, most importantly, access to the territory to evidence Europe’s new mineral potential.

Investigating rare metal potentials of the Alpine regions is of great importance to progress towards future supply independence. Sphalerite is an important carrier of Co, In, Ga, Ge, and Sb, and we know from the Eastern Alps, that vein deposits roughly host 66% of the Co, 18% of the Ga and 4% of the In resource. Here, we present data of sphalerite (and chalcopyrite) from two contrasting vein deposits in the Southern Alpine basement: the Pfunderer Berg (PF) Cu-Zn-Pb-Ag mine near Klausen and the Rabenstein (RS) F-Zn mine in the Sarn Valley. The PF mine is a Permian intrusion-hosted vein deposit with a chalcopyrite-sphalerite-galena-sulphosalt paragenesis. RS mine is a vein deposit with fluorite-sphalerite paragenesis, probably related to the Periadriatic fault.

The two ores show contrasting textures and chemistry of sphalerite, which are primarily related to formation temperature: at PB high-T ZnS is black and homogeneous and enriched in Fe-Mn-Cd-Cu-Se-Co-In-Sn, while at RS low-T ZnS is honey-coloured and zones and enriched in Pb-As-Ag-Sb-Hg-Tl-Ga-Ge. Rare metal medians at PB are 303, 124, and 187 µg/g for Co, In, and Sn. At RS medians for Ga, Sb, Ag, Ge, are 383, 203, 85, and 9.1 µg/g. Spot analyses can reach higher values, either related to mineral inclusions (PB) or to zoning (RS). Across zoned ZnS grains, co-variations with Fe-content (0.3 to 6 wt.%) or Cu (70 to 5000 µg/g) are related to evolving hydrothermal pulse. Results demonstrate significant rare metal variations across deposit types, but also complexities of fractionation within given deposits.

A more sustainable society with CO₂ neutral energy production requires substantial amounts of trace metal(loids). However, our understanding about the fractionation processes of these elements between the epithermal and porphyry environment is still limited, but may be essential to secure the future supply of these rare commodities. The porphyry-epithermal mineralization on Limnos (Fakos, Sardes, Kaspakas) show variable Te and related element (e.g., Au, Ag) contents, and therefore represent a natural laboratory to define key fractionation and enrichment processes.

Subalkaline to alkaline igneous rocks and siliciclastic sediments host the porphyry-epithermal mineralization on Limnos. Pyrite, magnetite and minor chalcopyrite dominate the porphyry mineralization, whereas the epithermal stage comprises pyrite, sphalerite, galena, chalcopyrite together with minor sulfosalts (e.g. enargite, tetrahedrite-tennantite, bournonite), tellurides and native Au. Pyrite is ubiquitous in most alteration-types and its chemical composition, therefore provides insights into mineralization processes at variable fluid conditions. Epithermal pyrite is enriched in most trace elements (e.g., As, Ag, Sb, Au, Pb, Tl) compared to porphyry pyrite (Se-bearing), most likely caused by a more favorable mineralization process in the epithermal environment. However, Te shows no systematic variation between porphyry and epithermal pyrite, which we refer to its competitive incorporation between pyrite, galena, sulfosalts and tellurides in the epithermal stage. Sulfur isotope variations in pyrite report on the contribution of magmatic and meteoric fluids in variable proportion between different mineralizations on Limnos. We present a hydrothermal model based on the mineralogical and chemical data, defining key fractionation processes for Te and related elements in the porphyry-epithermal environment.

European geology ranges from old mountain chains with more or less altered magmatic and sedimentary deposits over glaciogenic materials from the recent Ice Ages to very young marine or alluvial deposits etc. Thus, the ground under our feet carries a large variety of raw materials from sand and gravel over granites and marbles to precious or critical metals and minerals. Humans have extracted these materials from the (sub)surface since prehistorical eras, and these indispensable substances have and still do to a very large extent contribute to the evolution of humankind, and through the last couple of decades, national or regional geological surveys have played an important role in mapping these resources.

Most geological surveys host data on raw materials, however, data are typically organized in different ways from one country to another based on different geological traditions, legal frameworks etc. The MINTELL4EU project builds on previous projects to collect a selection of these national/regional raw material data, to store these in a central database, and finally to offer a visualization in a harmonized way at the European Geological Data Infrastructure (EGDI). This central database called MIN4EU includes, among other assets, the location of individual mineral occurrences and mines, aggregated statistical data at national level on production, trade, resources and reserves compiled in the electronic Minerals Yearbook, as well as data on test cases on UNFC. A brief overview of the database content and the resulting visualization through EGDI will be provided.

The MINTELL4EU project builds upon previous European-wide mineral intelligence projects, including ORAMA, MICA, MINventory and particularly the Minerals Intelligence Network for Europe project (Minerals4EU). In this most recent iteration, we have surveyed European geological surveys and other relevant data sources for detailed information on European mineral production, trade, resource, reserve and exploration data.

We present an updated electronic Minerals Yearbook, a snapshot of current European mineral intelligence. We will illustrate some preliminary data analysis of resources and reserves using baseline data from the previous survey in 2013. Time series analysis of production and trade data from 2013 will also be shown. We also present comparisons of European mineral data with global datasets for selected commodities essential to the net-zero carbon transition.

The evolution of Earth’s climate over geological timescales is linked to surface erosion by weathering of silicate minerals and burial of organic carbon. However, methodological difficulties in reconstructing erosion rates through time and feedbacks among tectonics, climate, and erosion spurred an ongoing debate on mountain erosion sensitivity to tectonic and climate forcing. A key question is whether late Cenozoic climate cooling has increased global erosion rates or not. The Himalaya plays a prominent role in this debate as its erosion produces a large fraction of global sediments delivered to ocean basins. We report a 6-Myr-long record of cosmogenic ¹⁰Be-derived erosion rates from the north-western Himalaya, which indicates that erosion rates in this region varied quasi-cyclically with a period of ~1 Myr and increased gradually towards the present. We hypothesize that the observed pattern of erosion rates occurred in response to the tectonic growth of the Himalaya by punctuated basal and frontal accretion of rocks from the underthrusting Indian plate and concomitant changes in topography. In this model, basal accretion episodically changes rock-uplift patterns, which brings landscapes out of equilibrium and results in quasi-cyclic variations in erosion rates. We used numerical landscape evolution simulations to demonstrate that this hypothesis is physically plausible. In addition, we suggest that the long-term increase in erosion rates was likely driven by successive basal accretion and the commensurate topographic growth in the interior of the Himalayan thrust wedge. Because tectonic accretion processes are inherent to collisional orogenesis, they likely confound climatic interpretations of erosion rate histories.

Cosmogenic nuclide analysis in sediment from the Earth’s largest rivers yields mean denudation rates of the sediment-producing areas that average out local variations commonly found in small rivers. Using this approach, we measured in situ cosmogenic ²⁶Al and ¹⁰Be in sand of >50 large rivers over a range of climatic and tectonic regimes covering 32% of the Earth’s terrestrial surface.

In 35% of the analyzed rivers, ²⁶Al/¹⁰Be ratios are significantly lower than these nuclides´ surface-production-rate ratio of 6.75. We explain these low ratio by a combination of slow erosion and shielding in the source area, and we provide estimates of the buffering timescales of sediment transport using paired nuclides. In the other 65% of studied rivers, ²⁶Al/¹⁰Be ratios are within uncertainty of their surface production-rate ratio, indicating cosmogenic steady state. For these rivers, we obtain a global source area denudation rate of 141 t/km²´yr (3.07 Gt/yr). By assuming that this sub-dataset is representative of the global land surface, we upscale to the total surface area for exorheic basins, thereby obtaining a global, millennial-scale denudation flux of 15.2 ± 2.8 Gt/yr. This value is slightly lower than published values from cosmogenic nuclides from small river basins (23 (+53/-16)) Gt/yr) upscaled using a global slope model, and also lower than modern sediment and dissolved loads exported to the oceans (24.0 Gt/yr). Our new approach confirms an estimate of global dissolved and solid matter transfer that converges to an encouragingly narrow range of within 35%.

Climate warming and the related permafrost degradation are thought to influence slope stability, landscape evolution, and the natural hazard potential in polar- and high mountain regions. In this context, we investigate the coastal range of Forkastningsfjellet, Svalbard, which is affected by rock slope deformations of different magnitudes and age. Based on a detailed multidisciplinary investigation, we discuss the causes, kinematics and timing of rock slide activity.

The distinct stair-stepped morphostructural relief of the Forkastningsfjellet ridge is the result of a giant postglacial deep-seated rock slide, which involved a minimum rock mass volume of 0.10 km³ and was probably related to the deglaciation of Isfjorden. Rock failure and movement in the hanging wall of a NW-dipping listric sliding surface led to the fragmentation of the sliding mass into separated tilt blocks.

Since then mass wasting and seacliff erosion take place along the steep slopes of the coastal tilt blocks and on August 16^th 2016 a coastal block of the postglacial Forkastningsfjellet rock slide was affected by a rotational rock slide comprising a volume of 175,000m³. As the reactivation of individual slide blocks could have severe consequences for the coastal regions of Longyearbyen by related displacement waves, a back analysis was carried out to derive potential controlling and triggering factors of the recent slope failure. Although the analysis suggests a structural control on the type and mechanism of slope failure, a significant impact of climate-related factors like permafrost degradation and increasing availability of water has to be considered.

Relict permafrost features (RPF) indicated by specific patterns of soil, sedimentary and landform structure are characteristic of Central Russian Plain watersheds. Paleocryogenic polygonal networks appear in a pattern of semi-regular spots, blocks and polygons on the surface usually associated with pseudomorphs of ice wedges or sand casts in correlated deposits. This research aimed at distinguishing RPF in sedimentary structure and its correlation with the modern and paleolandscape structure of 3 ha watershed area exposed in constantly expanding trenches. Interpretation of multi-temporal UAV-photography, lithological investigation of 21 sections and apparent magnetic susceptibility measurements allowed to reconstruct spatial organization of the postglacial sedimentary sequence of the key site. Eight sedimentary beds were distinguish starting with Late Saalian limnoglacial base followed by lacustrine (pond-like) facies of the Pleniglacial and solifluction-colluvial lenses of the Late Pleniglacial and Late Glacial up to Holocene colluvial and agrogenic slope facies. At least three generations of inherited wedge-like deformations have been revealed in these stratified thicknesses preliminary attributed to the onset of the last glaciation and its maximum and to one of the Late Glacial coolings. It is established that established are contrastingly displayed in the sedimentary structure, paleolandscapes and modern soil and vegetative cover, however, are rarely or almost not shown in the actual microtopography. Established relationship of ice wedge pseudomorphs and shallow dry gullies allowed interpreting the origin of the latter as initially cryogenic dells infilled by colluvial, incl. agrogenic, deposits and partially incised by agrogenically instigated slope erosion of the last century.

Speleothems (secondary calcium carbonate formations) offer significant potential for recording environmental processes above caves, an area increasingly referred to as the Critical Zone. Speleothems grow for hundreds to millions of years, with absolute chronology from U-Th and U-Pb chronometers. The solution properties of rainwater infiltrating the soil and underlying caves respond to environmental controls. These environmental signals can be preserved within speleothem carbonates. Recent efforts to calibrate, model and interpret this complex geochemistry has progressed along multiple paths. Here we bring together recent examples, including: i) calibrating and using Li isotopes for reconstructing weathering intensity [1,2]; ii) the use of Ca isotopes for reconstructing changes in rainfall amount [3]; iii) the combined use of d¹³C, ¹⁴C and d⁴⁴Ca to demonstrate changes in soil respiration [4]. Combining these proxies provides the potential of regional-scale input into climate, weathering and the chemical cycling of elements, on timescales from thousands to millions of years.

[1] C.C. Day et al. Lithium isotopes and partition coefficients in inorganic carbonates: proxy calibration for weathering reconstruction. GCA. [2] P.A.E. Pogge von Strandmann et al. 2017. Lithium isotopes in speleothems: Temperature-controlled variation in silicate weathering during glacial cycles. EPSL. 469, 64–74. [3] R.A. Owen et al. 2016. Calcium isotopes in caves as a proxy for aridity: Modern calibration and application to the 8.2 kyr event. EPSL, 443, 129–138. [4] F.A. Lechleitner et al. (in review). Stalagmite carbon isotopes suggest deglacial increase in soil respiration in Western Europe driven by temperature change. Climate of the Past.

Weathering is the fundamental precondition for erosion and soil formation which sculpture Earth´s surface. It is a complex interplay of minerals, rock fabric, tectonical fractures, climate, and organic activity.

To explore the dependences between these factors two weathering profiles on magmatic bedrock were compared using six-meter-deep soil pits and drill cores in both a humid and a Mediterranean climate regime of Chile. Detailed mineralogical and geochemical investigations of soil and saprolite were combined with spatially highly resolved geochemical analyses of fracture-related rock weathering.

The maximum saprolite depth in the humid climate turned out to be much shallower (approx. 6 m) than in the Mediterranean climate (almost 30 m). However, the entire soil-pit profile in the humid climate is characterized by distinct chemical depletion and intense mineral weathering (predominantly chemical weathering), whereas the Mediterranean profile only shows weak chemical and mineral weathering but high degrees of fracturing (predominantly physical weathering). This study suggests that surface inputs (water, O₂) initially enter the subsurface via tectonical fractures and trigger reactions such as iron-oxidation in Fe(II)-bearing silicates which induces fracturing or the transformation of feldspars which can hamper the weathering advance by porosity reduction. The higher content of Fe(II)-bearing silicates in the bedrock of the Mediterranean climate is thus considered the critical factor for the different developments of the two profiles.

This study stresses the magnitude of control the mineralogical composition has on weathering processes and that surface processes like erosion cannot be fully understood without a thorough investigation of the subsurface.

The ecology and structure of many tropical coral reefs have altered markedly over the past few decades. Drivers of this degradation range from direct local damage from destructive human practices to global scale climate stressors, and especially those associated with elevated sea‐surface temperature anomalies. A major consequence of these climatic and pervasive local stressors has often been a rapid decrease in the abundance of habitat building corals, which has consequently reduced reef structural complexity and coral carbonate production rates. Equally, many reefs have been impacted by changes (both increases and decreases) in the abundance of bioeroding taxa such as parrotfish, urchins, sponges and microendolithic organisms. The collective effect has been to alter the rates and relative balance of carbonate producing and eroding processes on many reefs. Such changes are of increasing interest because these processes directly regulate net rates of reef carbonate production and sediment generation, and collectively can impact upon multiple geo‐ecological functions on reefs. These functions include reef‐building and the capacity of reefs to accrete vertically in response to sea‐level rise, and the supply of sands necessary to sustain beaches and reef islands. This talk will discuss recent progress in developing methodologies to estimate rates of reef carbonate production, reef growth and sediment generation. It will then use selected recent field examples to highlight changes in these processes in response to ecological disturbance, and highlight the potential to integrate these data into numerical and lab-based modelling approaches than be used to predict coastal wave exposure under future sea level rise scenarios.

The effects of changing climate and environmental conditions on coral reef islands have received a lot of attention, and the findings are discussed broadly. The low elevation of such islands above mean sea level and the largely unconsolidated sediment is exposing them to hydrodynamic processes. Coral reef islands are formed by sediment sourced from the surrounding reef systems and depend on these reef systems as continuous material suppliers. Shifts in these governing conditions may affect these landforms, however the results of such shifts remain controversial as island-response is likely to be regionally specific. The present sedimentological study addresses the formation of a reef island in the Spermonde Archipelago, Sulawesi, and its development through time. Sediment cores of 10 m length taken on the island allowed to reconstruct the sedimentary history of this mid-shelf island. The carbonate facies from these cores reflects the development of the island and thus allows for inferring the evolution of the surrounding ecosystem as well as the hydrodynamic regime that governed sedimentation. While sediment from the maximum depth of the cores mirror parautochthonous accumulation in a lagoonal environment, subsequent sedimentation is thought to be the result of hydrodynamic events with oscillating intensity.

Early-diagenetic cementation of tropical carbonates results from the combination of numerous physico-chemical and biological processes. In the marine phreatic environment it represents an essential mechanism for the development and stabilization of carbonate platforms. However, many early-diagenetic cements that developed in the marine phreatic environment are likely to become obliterated during later stages of meteoric or burial diagenesis. In this contribution, a petrographic microfacies analysis of Holocene Halimeda segments collected on a coral island in the Spermonde Archipelago, Indonesia, is presented. Through electron microscopical analyses of thin sections, this study shows that segments are characterized by intragranular cementation of fibrous aragonite, equant Mg calcite (3.9 – 7.2 Mol% Mg), bladed low Mg calcite (0.4 – 1.0 Mol%) and mini-micritic Mg calcite (crystal size < 0.1 µm; 3.2 – 3.3 Mol% Mg). The consecutive development of (1) fibrous aragonite, (2) equant Mg calcite and (3) bladed low Mg calcite is explained by shifts in pore water pH and alkalinity through fluid kinetics and microbial sulfate reduction. Microbial activity appears to be the main trigger for the precipitation of mini-micritic Mg calcite, as inferred from the presumable detection of an extracellular polymeric matrix. Radiocarbon analyses of five Halimeda segments furthermore indicate that intragranular aragonite and Mg calcite cementation of microstructurally complex carbonate constituents in the shallow marine phreatic environment is a slower process than intergranular ooid cementation, characterized by relatively smooth surfaces.

Microbial mediation is considered an important process for the formation of primary dolomite at ambient temperature. Yet, no structural, mineralogical, chemical or isotopic means exist to discern this mode of dolomite formation from secondary dolomite. To explore the utility of metal isotopes in allowing this distinction we characterize magnesium and calcium stable isotope ratios in primary (proto)dolomites from a modern hypersaline environment.

Samples from the Khor Al-Adaid sabkhas in Qatar show consistent isotopic differences of Ca isotopes (Δ^44/40Ca) of -1.1 and -1.8 ‰ between solution and (proto-)dolomite and -0.3 to -0.7 ‰ between solution and organic phases, consistent with a previously postulated two-step fractionation process that enriches microbially mediated dolomite in ⁴⁰Ca (Krause et al., 2012). Mg isotopes reveal a more complex picture with varying magnitudes of fractionation across different microbial zones in the shallow subsurface in agreement with a wide range of Δ^26/24Mg-values previously observed in the sabkahs of Abu Dhabi (Geske et al., 2015) and suggested impact of microbial activity on δ²⁶Mg (Riechelmann et al., 2020). The high variability is moreover modulated by authigenic palygorskite formation close to the water-sediment interface that yields consistently ²⁶Mg-enriched signatures.

While clay-free sites suggest simple Mg precipitation from seawater into dolomite (Shalev et al., 2020), our data shows that Mg uptake into clay minerals does not allow a straightforward identification of a characteristic isotopic fingerprint in ancient primary dolomite, but shows potential to obtain a detailed picture of specific microbial involvement.

Here, we present element to Ca ratios (Mg/Ca, Sr/Ca, Na/Ca and Mn/Ca) and stable isotope data (δ¹⁸O, δ¹³C) of the parasitic foraminifer Hyrrokkin sarcophaga, collected from two different host organisms, Desmophyllum pertusum - a cold-water coral commonly found in cold-water coral reefs and Acesta excavata - a bivalve associated with cold-water coral reefs.

Our results reveal that the geochemical signature in H. sarcophaga is influenced by the host organism. Sr/Ca ratios are 1.1 mmol mol^-1 higher in H. sarcophaga that infest D. pertusum, which could be an indication that dissolved host carbonate material is utilised in shell calcification. Similarly, we measured 3.1 ‰ lower δ¹³C and 0.3 ‰ lower δ¹⁸O values in H. sarcophaga that lived on D. pertusum, which might be caused by the direct uptake of the host’s carbonate material with a more negative isotopic composition. Moreover, we observe higher Mn/Ca ratios in foraminifera that lived on A. excavata but did not penetrate the host shell compared to specimen that did.

H. sarcophaga is therefore, unlikely to be a reliable indicator of paleoenvironmental conditions using Sr/Ca, Mn/Ca, δ¹⁸O or δ¹³C unless the host organism is known and its geochemical composition can be accounted for. Still, these results provide interesting insights in the calcification process of these specialized foraminifera.

A 3D web-service has been developed for the modeling and for the management of karst aquifers and related groundwater resources. Visual KARSYS allows users to build explicit models of karst aquifers via a 3D geological modeller (gmLib Python library) and a series of tools (i.e. algorithms) which provide characteristics of groundwater bodies by applying hydraulic principles.

Visual KARSYS is designed for geologists or hydrogeologists working for public institutions or private companies, but also for administration or decision makers facing various issues in karst environments: groundwater resources, natural hazards, geothermal energy, civil engineering, etc. Outputs from Visual KARSYS (data, models and resulting documentation) can be shared between users for being consulted or edited.

The web-service is available at visualkarsys.com and it is currently free-of-charge and we encourage users to use it. In March 2021, more than 425 users already registered and ~150 persons attended the training courses.

The Visual KARSYS project is supported by the Swiss Federal Office for Environment via the grant for the promotion of environmental technology (2016-2019, UTF 537.13.16).

Digital 3D geomodels are becoming a routine tool for geoscientific research, engineering and surveying. Most models incorporate various datasets into a simplified virtual representation of reality.
Turning the process of model building into something sustainable, so that future users can build on the results and insights provided by a given model raises a number of questions:

• How can we assure that other users can reconstruct the same model given the required information?
• How do we ensure that repetition of a construction using the same information yields the same geomodel, such that the process itself is reproducible?

With Geohub we present a theoretical framework to represent a construction process of a geomodel. We represent a construction process as directed acylic hypergraph. Each node of this hypergraph represents a dataset used or generated as part of the construction process.
Each hyperedge represents a construction step, that transforms a set of input datasets into a single possible intermediate output dataset. Construction steps consists of a generic representation, which is executable with a computer.
This enables us to repeat a construction process to:

• check if the construction of a geomodel is reproducible by comparing the results of different repetitions
• update a geomodel with new input data by repeating the construction using the new dataset
• generate different realisations of the same geomodel built by input dataset based on stochastic distributions.

Eventually we present an implementation of this framework ensuring repeatability of the construction process and reproducibility of the geomodels constructed in this way.

Although 3-D geological modeling has been mostly employed in the prospection and exploitation of ores, oil and gas, its importance in the field of groundwater resources management is considerably increasing. Traditional 3-D geological modeling schemes are based on explicit digitization of geological units and structures. Progresses in 3-D interpolation techniques have favored the emergence of implicit modeling, in which geological surfaces are automatically created from hard data and interpretation. The major benefit of implicit modeling relies on its speed. In this work the implicit modeling approach was applied to conceptualize and model a karst aquifer in southwest Germany, using digital elevation data, geological maps, borehole logs, and geological interpretation. Dip and strike measurements as well as soil-gas surveys of mantel-borne CO₂ were conducted to verify the existence of a postulated fault. The geological model was automatically translated into a numerical groundwater flow model that was calibrated to match measured hydraulic heads, spring discharge rates, and flow directions observed in tracer tests. Refinements of the numerical model’s spatial parametrization was iteratively conducted, using the geological model for visualization of interim simulations. As the results of numerical modeling may support or contradict the 3-D geological model, additional geological insights can be eventually gained in this way. The geological model allowed the proper assessment of the system geometry and the definition of boundary conditions. The numerical groundwater flow model was applied to evaluate the potential risks from limestone quarries to local water supply wells.

3D modelling of complex salt structures for the purpose of final disposal of radioactive waste requires a particulary high degree of precision. In this perspective, conventional geological 3D modelling software fails to produce satisfying results. For this reason, BGR uses the software openGEO that allows the integration of all types of basic geoscientific data. In particular, for the management of ground-penetrating radar measurements a group of specific tools has been developed as part of the software package.

However, compared to conventional 3D geological modelling software openGEO is more labour-intensive. This is because model surfaces are not created by an algorithmic procedure. Quite the contrary, surfaces need to be constructed manually by considering and incorporating all accessible data.

Especially for areas within the model where data are limited and/or geological structures are simple in terms of geometry, the idea is, that the combination of openGEO with software that is based on an interpolation algorithm would facilitate the modelling process. As a first approach, simple geological structures were modelled in SKUA-GOCAD and merged with the model in openGEO. Here we present first results from combining both software packages in the described way. We used salt structures and their complex inner layers for testing the developed workflow. Thus, we are here introducing a more efficient approach compared to the sole use of openGEO and add a new level of flexibility. The workflow can potentially be applied to the 3D modelling in other geologically complex settings where a high degree of precion is required.

The creation and application of 3D geological models has become increasingly important within the geological surveys in recent years. In the joint project TUNB (Tieferer Untergrund Norddeutsches Becken - Deeper Underground North German Basin), the geological surveys of northern Germany together with the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) created a coordinated and largely border-harmonised 3D geological model of the North German Basin for their respective state areas.

The objective of this presentation is to describe the approach to develop a generalised 3D geological model from the base Zechstein to the Tertiary of Lower Saxony based on heterogeneous and inconsistent data within this project. The data basis for the current model was the predecessor model GTA3D, digitally available borehole data, depth migrated 2D and 3D seismic data and supplementary data such as thickness and structural maps of lithostratigraphic units. 3D geological modelling was carried out with Emerson SKUA-GOCAD, taking into account the project-related generalisation specifications and geological plausibility. The problem of inconsistencies occurring in the input data due to their different sources, quantity, and quality could not be solved by automated procedures. Instead, this was often subject to the geological expertise of the modeller, who took into account the regional geological conditions to weight the data and create a model that is as free of contradictions as possible. We demonstrate how the integration of new data led to changes in the geometry of salt structures and lithostratigraphic horizons with respect to the predecessor model.

Attributed 3D volumetric models are important tools for geothermal exploration, subsurface storage of natural gases and waste and for risk management (e.g. contamination of ground water or induced seismicity). Of special interest are lithological attributes, which reveal important evidence on characteristics of deep aquifers and reservoir rocks and support project planning.

Therefore, we created attributed 3D volumetric models, which base on a detailed 3D structural geological model of the Altmark region (North German Basin) comprising 31 horizons from base Zechstein to Quaternary. For this purpose, information from lithologic-paleogeographic maps was transferred to the volume models by defining categorial properties. Shale fractions could be qualitatively estimated from the petrographic descriptions and quantitatively confirmed using gamma ray logs. Subsequently, a fault seal analysis was performed on the basis of the lithofacies model. Calculation of the juxtaposition parameter and smear gauge ratio (SGR) provides information on the faults transmissivity and the clay smearing of permeable fault segments.

The resulting attributed 3D models reveal essential information on geometry and characteristics of deep aquifers and reservoir rocks, as well as potential fluid pathways or sealing functions across faults in the Altmark region. Furthermore, extracted lithological information and attributed fault cutoff lines allow a detailed representation of subsurface parameters and the fault network on 2D maps. The results thus form the basis for large information systems and databases providing FAIR and easy to use information for further planning and prospection efforts.

Chromites from ophiolites and layered intrusions show a wide variety in Cr#, Mg# and Cr/Fe ratios. These ratios provide information on the genesis of the chromite deposits e.g. the place of formation.

By means of µ-EDXRF this information can be obtained in a very quick way from cut hand specimen.

Unfortunately, chromites show a number of very intensive diffraction signals due to the polychromatic beam of the µ-EDXRF system, which even after calculating the minimum of two detectors has still some influence on the chemistry of a single chromite grain.

To reduce this problem, chromite aggregates were segmented and for each individual grain, the shapes were used to calculate the mean spectra for both of the detectors (D1/D2), the minimum (min) of both, the mean, the detector minus minimum of both (D1/2-min) to localize the position of the diffraction signals in the spectrum.

All individual grain D1 and D2 spectra are plotted against each other to detect those grains showing a minimum of diffraction, to reduce the diffraction impact on the chemical signal.

Assuming that the chemical pattern of chromite grains within a texturally homogeneous sample should not be to extreme regarding Cr# and Mg# those grains of minimum D1/D2 deviation were selected to represent the chromite chemistry. Validation is done by microprobe analysis.

In a second step these “pure” pattern of selected samples referring to individual tectonic levels of an ophiolite are used as endmembers for hyperspectral classification of chromite of various samples into individual groups/tectonic levels.

Chemical reactivity, mobility, and bioavailability of manganese (Mn) in the environment depend crucially on its speciation. Despite the broad application of X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) to environmental samples, studies covering the identification and quantification of Mn species in soils are surprisingly scarce. In this study, we analyzed 32 organic and inorganic Mn reference compounds by Mn K-edge (6,539 eV) XAS to assess the potential of XAS to differentiate various Mn coordination environments in soils. X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) spectra of reference compounds were evaluated for the oxidation state of Mn using linear combination fit analysis. Results of this analysis were validated by redox titrations. The average local coordination environment (<5 Å) of Mn was analyzed by shell-fitting of extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) spectra. Based on spectroscopic data and statistical data analysis, Mn reference compounds were grouped into physically and/or chemically meaningful clusters with diagnostic spectral features. Our results show that XANES spectroscopy can accurately determine the average oxidation state of Mn within 0.12 valence units. EXAFS spectroscopy is capable of differentiating at least three major Mn species groups, which include Mn(III/IV) manganates, Mn(III) oxyhydroxides and organic Mn(III) compounds. Using this information, we elucidated the oxidation state and local coordination environment of Mn in Cambisols, Luvisols, and a Stagnosol (L, O, A, B, and C horizons). Our talk will highlight the capabilities and limitations of XAS in analyzing Mn speciation of bulk soils and provide a guide for scientists exploring the biogeochemical Mn cycle in soil environments.

Spatially detailed surface analysis of geological samples and drill cores offers insight into element and mineral distributions on large scales, an important information in ore exploration processes.
Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) is an uprising technology that allows fast in-situ geochemical measurements directly on a sample surface under atmospheric conditions. Since nearly no sample preparation is needed, the technology is suitable for spatially-resolved measurements on large samples such as drill cores. LIBS also allows the detection of light elements like Li, an important element due to the increasing amounts needed for battery production of all kinds. Nevertheless, interpreting LIBS data is challenging, since various physical and chemical matrix effects do not allow a straightforward analysis of heterogeneous material. Especially quantification remains problematic.
We used a LIBS drill core scanner (Nd:YAG Q-switched 20Hz 1064nm laser and a high-resolution 285-964nm Echelle spectrometer) for 1D profile measurements of 10 consecutive drill core meters from the Rapasaari Li-deposit in Finland. The deposit covers Li-bearing spodumene and muscovite pegmatite, from which five large samples were measured with high resolution in 2D, as well. Small-scale ICP-MS mappings were used as pixel-matched quantitative reference measurements of Li concentrations. They were successfully co-registrated with the LIBS measurements, which enabled matrix-matched quantification using chemometric quantification models.

MC-ICP-MS has become the clearly dominant technology in ²³⁰Th/U-dating over the last 20 years. The ongoing increase in measurement performance allows for ε-precision by now (Andersen et al., 2004; Cheng et al., 2013) and enabled the production of a large amount of datasets and insights covering a broad range of fields. Despite this large database, systematic studies on the impact of individual corrections on the raw data, long-term instrumental stability and on data processing routines are still sparse.

We present the measurement and data analysis protocols developed and applied at the Institute for Environmental Physics at Heidelberg University and examine the contribution of individual corrections, such as tailing and hydride correction, to the total uncertainties of the atomic ratios ²³⁰Th/²³⁸U and ²³⁴U/²³⁸U and of the ages for this procedure. As demonstration examples, three different speleothem samples of different U and Th concentrations and ages were chosen. This puts specific quantitative constraints on general findings as the dominance of tailing correction.

Long-term instrumental stability is examined by compiling a multi-year dataset of (²³⁰Th/²³⁸U) and (²³⁴U/²³⁸U) for the Harwell-Uraninite 1 (HU-1) reference material of more than thousand measurements which is then used for the recalibration of the inhouse ²²⁹Th, ²³³U and ²³⁶U spike. Lastly, we present a Python-based GUI for the combined evaluation of mass-spectrometric data and age determination that offers high flexibility with regard to the variation of input constants, such as the initial (²³⁰Th/²³²Th) used for detritus correction.

Documentation of sample collection and instrument deployment in the field is time-consuming, error-prone and laborious. Even though best practices in research data management suggest that data should be captured in a structured digital format as early as possible in the data life cycle, fieldwork often suffers a digitisation bottleneck.

Mobile applications are one solution to overcome the digitisation bottleneck. They allow data capture in the field, including automatic capture of contextual data like campaign information, operator, date and time, geographic position, etc. On the other hand, systematic field campaigns commonly follow specific workflows and no single application can cover all requirements. Development costs of creating a new software package for each field campaign are also prohibitive.

Instead of a specific mobile application, we use the FAIMS application framework that allows fast production of mobile data acquisition applications that are tailor-made for their intended use cases. In field deployments, we demonstrated that in combination with machine-readable sample labels the sample documentation workflow could be streamlined and the time needed could be reduced by 50%.

The FAIMS application framework allows data, collected offline, to be synchronised between devices and a server, facilitating both data sharing between campaign participants and securing against data loss. The collation of data in this manner also allows data to be fed back into field operations to support decision-making, e.g., to optimise sampling strategies in a dynamic environment or based on newly acquired data.

GEOROC is a leading open-access source of geochemical and isotopic datasets and has facilitated thousands of peer-reviewed publications and new avenues of geochemical research. The new Digital Geochemistry Infrastructure (DIGIS) concept of GEOROC 2.0, an integral part of the NFDI4Earth initiative, will continue and enhance the existing data collection by generating a connected platform that meets future challenges of digital data-based research and provides advanced service to the community.

Our approach is to (1) realign GEOROC with current and future demands in digital geochemical research, especially regarding FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) principles; (2) provide this service with future-ready, adaptable IT infrastructure; and (3) identify, develop and recommend good-practice rules for the curation of physical samples linked to the GEOROC 2.0 platform. DIGIS will implement an interoperable metadata model as well as data and metadata exchange via standardised application interfaces (APIs). The scientific development of GEOROC 2.0 and the re-organisation of its IT infrastructure will enable a more diverse range of geochemical data, improving integration in other research disciplines such as soil science, remote sensing, and archaeometry. The DIGIS concept for GEOROC 2.0 includes open access to end-to-end text and data mining, integration of IGSNs and data DOIs, multi-way data harvesting capabilities, and state-of-the-art connectivity to other databases. By ensuring continued open access to a FAIR database, DIGIS aims to facilitate sustainability in future Environmental and Earth Science research.

Today, research data is widely available in digital form, datasets are easily accessible online and the dataset creator should consider it advantageous as this leads to greater uptake. However, the downside is that digital datasets can be easily copied, duplicated in multiple places, and re-published through more than one repository or service. Particularly with web services, mirroring resources is a common practice, especially in online GIS packages and dashboards. ‘Copy WMS link’ buttons are common, but these often only provide access to the service endpoints: any information about the owner, licence, accreditation, citation etc is not carried with the data. Increasingly poor practices in republication and duplication are leading to exactly the same versions of data/metadata being available in multiple places: some replications are assigned new DOIs, without cross-referencing the original DOI.

Increasingly funders ask for information about usage and impact of datasets/data acquisition campaigns they funded. Journal publishers now require that appropriate credit be given to whoever collected, curated and/or preserved the data in a publication. Best practices are currently poorly defined: researchers are raising issues on ethics and asking if we need to rethink data licencing.

There is clearly a need for community agreed documentation of best practices for the identification of data aggregations, data re-publication and mirroring of data to multiple sites. For ethical scientific research there is an urgent need to be able to identify the authoritative or canonical version of a dataset and ensure correct attribution and citation of any data source.

AuScope is Australia’s National Geoscience Research Infrastructure Program and seeks to provide a world-class research physical and digital infrastructure to help tackle Australia's key geoscience challenges. Launched in 2007, AuScope’s data-generating infrastructures range from VLBI telescopes to geochemistry/geochronology laboratories and geophysical data acquisitions. To utilise data collected by these infrastructures and equivalents elsewhere, the Australian Geoscience Research and Government communities have collaborated on building a suite of data portals, tools, software and virtual laboratories that enabled discovery of data and tools and process them using online workflows.

Over time, it was recognised the nature of research was changing - it has become more transdisciplinary and data-intensive. Processing and storage capacities have multiplied enabling processing of higher resolution datasets, new tools like notebooks and containerisation have become available, and the demand for mobile solutions is growing. Online portals with prefixed workflows no longer supported research innovation: researchers wanted greater flexibility to discover their own data sources and combine them with tools of their choice and process where most optimal.

In 2017, the AuScope Virtual Research Environment (AVRE) was launched to support these new ambitions. The aspiration was to realise a service-oriented science platform that will allow users to choose their own data sets and tools and empower next generation data assimilation and modelling. Through using international standards and protocols, AVRE will ensure connection with equivalent infrastructures in the marine, bio, environmental, geospatial, etc communities, as well as seamlessly integrate with relevant international research infrastructures such as ENVRI, EPOS, EarthScope, etc.

In less than one decade the open-access data journal Earth System Science Data (ESSD, a member of the Copernicus Open Access Publisher family) grew from a start-up venture into one of the highest-rated journals in global environmental science. Stimulated by data needs of the International Polar Year 2007-2008, ESSD now serves a very broad community of data providers and users, ensuring that users get free and easy access to quality data products and that providers gain full scientific credit for preparing, describing and sharing those products via a peer-reviewed data description article. Adopting technology and practices from research journals,

ESSD moved data publication from an abstract concept to a working enterprise, bridging the worlds of data and research; several publishers now support data-sharing journals. ESSD serves as a prominent voice for, and useful example of, emphatic fully-free fully-open global data access. ESSD publishes comprehensive data descriptions, certifying quality and ensuring accessibility of the described data or database and allowing users to pursue subsequent analysis and interpretation with confidence. As ESSD works with data providers and data repositories to confront challenges and barriers, increasing submission numbers indicate that the concept of sharing data through formal publication meets a strong community need.

Understanding earth materials is critical to creating a sustainable, carbon-neutral society due to their involvement in many vital processes. Earth materials control the feasibility of subsurface energy storage, geothermal energy extraction, and are a source of critical elements. However, perturbations to geological systems can also result in hazards, such as human-induced earthquakes. If we want to tackle current, pressing scientific questions related to sustainable development for a circular economy, there is an urgent need to make multi-scale, multi-dimensional characterisations of earth materials available to a broad spectrum of earth-science disciplines. In addition to the society relevant topics, the properties of earth materials determine how the Earth works on the most fundamental level.

To overcome this challenge, 15 European electron and X-ray microscopy facilities join forces to establish EXCITE (Electron and X-ray microscopy community for structural and chemical imaging techniques for earth materials; www.excite-network.com).

EXCITE enables access to high-end microscopy facilities and to join the knowledge and experience from the different institutions.

EXCITE develops community-driven technological imaging advancements that strengthen and extend the current implementation of leading-edge microscopy for earth-materials research.

EXCITE integrates joint research programmes with networking, training, and transnational access activities, to enable both academia and industry to answer critical questions in earth-materials science and technology.

As such, EXCITE builds a community of highly qualified earth scientists, develops correlative imaging technologies and provides access to world-class facilities to new and non-expert users that are often hindered from engaging in problem-solving microscopy.

The fourth industrial revolution is changing how geoscience is carried out, how information is shared and how society and people engage with the world around them and with scientific discovery and data. Geoscience plays a crucial and central role supporting solutions to societal challenges such as the energy transition, understanding (and mitigating) geohazard risks and ensuring environmental sustainability and resilience. From a geodata management point of view this will only be achieved through an end-to-end data management process, from acquisition to delivery of quality-assured data.

As we strive to understand ever more complex and interdependent earth systems we must have access to trusted and authorative data. This is critical for the development of our geoscience knowledge through the exploitation of emergent technology such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Digital Twins, and the further use of autonomous systems. These new technologies will enable us to ‘forecast’ future scenarios, as well as develop ‘hindcasting’ techniques to calibrate and confirm hypotheses. Increasingly, modelling approaches informed by sensor networks and edge computing approaches drawn across the Internet of Things (IoT) and by novel data sources such as that from citizen science can also be used to develop ‘nowcasting’ techniques. This a key component of Digital Twin approaches. All of these new areas of digital geoscience research are reliant on well managed data.

With the increasing access and availability of digital information in all areas of society, there is an expectation of openness and transparency in information used for evidence and decision making, especially from publicly-funded research institutes. Appropriate, ethical and responsible use of geoscience data and models, especially around the use of emerging technology, is essential.

A fundamental requirement is that geoscience data is trusted, secure, authoritative and FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable). To preserve data and to make data FAIR requires Trusted Repositories that follow the TRUST principles for digital repositories (transparency, responsibility, user focus, sustainability and appropriate technology).

Open science has led to journals requesting access to both supporting data and models, and to data journals dedicated to data as a primary research output. This requires national data repositories to be certificated as trusted repositories and collaboration across the global geoscience community to enable interoperability and reuse.

Covering 15,000,000 km², the pan-European seas represent a promising new frontier for the exploration of mineral resources. The GeoERA-MINDeSEA consortium, a cooperative network of 12 Geological Surveys and Marine Institutes, is facing this exploration challenge. 688 seabed mineral occurrences are described in the MINDeSEA database, GIS cartographies and reports, containing valuable information on geology, metallogeny, critical raw materials prospectivity and mineral potential. Five types of mineral deposits are investigated, including seafloor massive sulphides, ferromanganese crusts, phosphorites, polymetallic nodules and placers. Many of the deposits exhibit a polymetallic nature that include one or more battery metals such as cobalt, lithium, manganese, tellurium, nickel, rare earth elements, copper, and other strategic and critical metals. These deposits are being explored using cutting-edge technologies both onboard ship and at labs, as well as in seabed mineral occurrences under the jurisdiction of European coastal states, all of which may provide an alternative sustainable resource to land-based mineral deposits. Maps on the seafloor mineral occurrences and their metallogeny for energy-critical elements are being produced for the first time to support European climate actions and growth strategies. An enormous challenge in terms of research, technological innovation, environmental protection, spatial planning and social license is facing the European and international research and sustainable development plans. MINDeSEA will identify areas for sustainable development and information to support decision-making on management and Marine Spatial Planning in pan-European seas as part of its core actions.

The dedicated website (https://geoeramindesea.wixsite.com/mindesea) and Social Media (https://twitter.com/MINDeSEA) provide more detailed information about the project MINDeSEA.

Critical metals (CM) are important to develop a sustainable society in the EU. Today, more than 80% of most CM are imported and EU is striving for a higher internal production to reach the Green Deal. Historical tailings can be a source of CM due to high concentrations left in the waste. The possibility to re-mine Be and W from skarn tailings was studied in a research project between 2016-2021. The volume of the waste was low, the CM-concentrations were lower than in the primary ore, and the tailings has been physically stratified during deposition. Geochemical processes has partly relocated Be and W to secondary minerals, and altered the surface properties of their primary minerals. However, the project showed that if the environmental and social aspects are considered, re-mining can be beneficial for the tailings. Thus, the mine drainage contained high concentrations of Be, which caused adverse impact on ecosystems downstream the repository. Weathering of the tailings will continue for 100 of years, which stress the need for remediation. Traditional techniques such as cover and water-saturation are not suitable to use. Re-mining could instead be implemented to decrease the environmental impact. Future studies should develop extraction methods that targets both primary and secondary minerals enriched in CM to generate environmentally safe waste, and the extracted product could support the internal production of CM. Moreover, taking responsibility for contaminated tailings could increase the social license towards mining, which is an important factor to increase the metal production in the EU.

With the global increase in raw material demand there is a need for harmonized supporting tools for sustainable resource management in Europe. Europe needs to assess their resource potential, but the European countries do not have a common tool to aggregate information for continent-wide resource inventories. The United Nations Framework Classification for Resources (UNFC) is a system that may be used for this purpose.

One of the specific tasks in the MINTELL4EU project under the GeoERA programme has been to test if the European geological surveys will be able to use UNFC as a tool to evaluate a country’s known and potential resources across variable levels of knowledge. The project has also tested if the application of UNFC can provide better harmonization of mineral resource data nationally and across Europe.

To gain experience on UNFC, the work in MINTELL4EU has been based on case studies. Based on the knowledge and lessons learned from the case studies, guidelines and recommendations for further work will be given. The project shows that there are different levels of experience in UNFC among the European geological surveys, and the approach and methods on UNFC varies between the countries. It is clear that there is a need for a more harmonized system and that stricter guidelines on how to do UNFC are required.

Results from the project will be presented.

Government organisations compile mineral resource data for national resource accounting. The information is collected and used in research, planning of mineral exploration, and in decision making on national and EU level mineral policies. The data are a combination of publicly disclosed information from active and non-active projects and historical mineral inventories, at extremely variable degree of data density. The databases contain both commercially viable resources and commodity endowments without consideration of economic viability in foreseeable future. Only the former can be reported according to current industrial standards as required by stock exchanges. A harmonised way to describe all resource data is the United Nations Framework Classification (UNFC) resources reporting code which reflects the geological uncertainty and the different project maturity levels. The UNFC code allows also for resource classes where the data density is low and no technical, environmental, social nor economic viability are assessed.

To achieve a coherent and consistent resource aggregation within and across countries, to support the activities to secure future sustainable raw material supply and sustainable resource management, it is necessary that: 1) the UNFC classification is used in systematic and transparent way within all countries, and 2) there is a common agreement on principles of how to move forward in national-level aggregations in systematic and harmonized way. We see that the key issues are in dealing with data gaps and inconsistent application of the UNFC code. We aim to provide solutions in various cases with data gaps, and where we have seen non-consistency appearing.

Easy web access to useful and reliable mineral information for the whole of Europe is the main objective of the extension of the M4EU base in the GeoERA project Mineral Intelligence for Europe (MINTELL4EU). The foundation has been laid by previous projects such as Minerals4EU, ProSUM, SCRREEN, EuRare, ORAMA, and new ones have been added in collaboration with ongoing projects such as RESEERVE. Europe's geological survey organizations play an important role as they are the main contributors in collecting and storing information on raw materials at national or regional level and making it available to end users as policy and decision makers. The information includes, among other things, the location of individual mineral deposits (occurrences) and mines, etc., which are stored in a central database, now called MIN4EU. However, national datasets are typically organized differently from country to country, based on different geological traditions and legal obligations. Our goal was to maximize harmonization, achieve higher quality of collected data, achieve higher interoperability by following the INSPIRE directive, include data from a larger number of countries, and visualize these data on the European Geological Data Infrastructure (EGDI) in a harmonized, sometimes targeted way.

The methods for collecting (harvesting) data and several error detections tools to help data providers check the status of their national data reported in MIN4EU DB will be discussed. Examples of successful and less successful harmonized visualizations, data sharing with other information systems and future challenges are also presented.

Single borehole dilution tests are a method for characterizing groundwater monitoring wells or boreholes and can either be conducted as uniform injection throughout the entire saturated length or as point injection at one specific depth. By injecting a tracer into a borehole and measuring concentration profiles, flow horizons and possible vertical flow can be identified and quantified. Compared to conventional methods, such as flowmeters, SBDTs are cheaper and require less equipment, but allow important conclusions about wells and aquifers.

Uniform injections deliver information about the entire saturated length and can be conducted using different techniques. The most common one uses a hosepipe filled with tracer solution to obtain a uniform concentration over the entire water column. We present a simplified method using a permeable injection bag to achieve close-to-uniform tracer distribution in the well.

However, uniform injections are not ideally suitable for the investigation of vertical flow. For this purpose, point injections are more appropriate. We introduce a newly developed probe which can be filled with saline solution, lowered into the intended depth and then be opened by a falling weight. Numerous tests have been carried out in the laboratory and several groundwater monitoring wells, to evaluate the simplified method for uniform injections and the new probe for point injections. Results show that with the simplified method, significant and reproducible results can be obtained. The functionality of the new injection probe was also demonstrated. Both techniques represent useful tools for efficient hydraulic characterization of boreholes in karst and other aquifers.

Characterising subsurface hydraulic and geomechanical properties is a prerequisite for Earth resource management. Traditional approaches such as hydraulic testing are costly and require specific infrastructure as well as expertise which limits general testing capabilities. Passive Subsurface Characterisation (PSC) uses the groundwater response to natural forces, such as Earth tides and atmospheric pressure changes, to determine state of confinement and estimate hydro-geomechanical properties of the subsurface in-situ. This approach only requires standard measurements of groundwater hydraulic head and barometric pressure as well as theoretical Earth tides which can be calculated. This presentation gives an overview of the state of the science. Calculation of hydro-geomechanical subsurface properties from standard groundwater monitoring datasets can be done conveniently using the new python package HydroGeoSines (HGS). HGS contains key methods from the peer-reviewed literature and therefore allows anyone with python skills to apply PSC to their datasets. PSC offers cost-effective estimations and can be applied to existing datasets provided they meet minimum quality criteria. Further analysis applied to monitoring bores at different field sites around the world exemplifies that, apart from basic hydraulic properties (hydraulic conductivity, specific storage, barometric efficiency), the full poroelastic parameter space (porosity, shear, Young’s and bulk moduli, Skempton’s and Biot-Willis coefficients and undrained/drained Poisson’s ratios) can be determined. Since PSC is an underutilised tool, this presentation aims to raise awareness as well as for the need to update groundwater monitoring practice to maximise the benefits of PSC.

Facing a couple of dry and warm years which are consistent with climate change scenarios, there is now increasing need for advanced diagnostic tools for drought risk assessment at the scale of years or decades. Commonly models are used for that purpose. However, they often suffer from a lack of data at sufficient spatial resolution, resulting in substantial uncertainties when applied beyond the bounds of single case studies. On the other hand, recent experience showed that simple extrapolating of trends of observed behaviour would not be adequate due to substantial changes of boundary conditions.

A new method has been developed and tested at a regional scale (about 10⁵ km²). It has been shown recently that most of the variance of groundwater head dynamics at that scale can be ascribed to differing degrees of damping of very similar input signals, that is, groundwater recharge dynamics, depending on the thickness and the texture of the overlying vadose zone. The degree of damping can easily be determined by a principal component analysis of a set of groundwater head time series. The stronger the damping the more pronounced is the memory. It could be shown that for wells with pronounced memory groundwater heads have been decreased for about 40 years in Northeast Germany. Thus the backbone of landscape hydrology has been exhibiting continuous weakening, resulting in increasing drought risk in the mid-term, although intermittent recovery at other sites seems to suggest the opposite.

Irrigation agriculture in Los Arenales aquifer has resulted in staggering groundwater level declines in the last quarter of the XX century. The objective of this study is to assess the contribution of MAR to reverse such a problematic situation. To this end, we compare two neighbouring and analogous groundwater bodies within this aquifer, namely Los Arenales (LA) and Medina del Campo (MC). The primary difference between them is the presence of three large-scale MAR sites in LA. We employ the Mann-Kendall test and Theil-Sen estimator for slope analysis and an empirical approach to assess field significance. Additionally, we compute the average groundwater levels and explore agricultural and climatological information to complement the statistical analysis. The slope analysis reflects a dramatic drop in groundwater levels in LA and MC during 1985-2001 (~100% of trends are negative) with slope strengths in the order of -1.5 m/year. The subsequent analysis periods (2002-2011 and 2012-2020) show a substantial improvement of groundwater availability in LA (~75% of the trends are positive) and marginally in MC (~25% of the trends are positive). No field significance was detected in the area. The analysis of average groundwater levels against climatological and agricultural information depicts the socioeconomic similarities between both groundwater bodies and the pronounced recovery in LA (~10% higher than the lowest average level) when compared to MC (~4%). This study demonstrates that MAR very likely accounts for the difference in groundwater storage recovery between LA and MC and the suitability of this technique to counteract aquifer overexploitation.

The improvement of groundwater availability in arid areas by infiltration of treated wastewater will play an important role in the next few years. Small wastewater plant is a good alternative in places where central wastewater treatment is not available. Numerical models can be applied to examine the processes more closely and to examine a large number of scenarios analysing.

The study described deals with the numerical modeling of a hypothetical infiltration system at Sarden (Syria) which is supposed to infiltrate treated wastewater into the aquifer. The aim of this work was the evaluation of the infiltration of the treated wastewater and the combination of this with rainwater infiltration from small village, as well as to propose a practicable procedure a possible influence on the groundwater quality can be estimated and evaluated.

PCSiWaPro^® (a software for seepage water simulation) was used to create and to simulate their influence on the saturation ratios in the unsaturated zone. In addition, scenarios with different boundary conditions were created and implemented in the model variants.

Results of the simulations carried out indicate that the treated wastewater can infiltrate according to the geofactors at the Sarden site. The distance between the groundwater level and the top of the groundlevel shows a great influence on the saturation conditions of the soil zone under consideration.

A decrease in the substance concentration over depth, according to the degradation parameters used, show the results of the simulation. The concentrations at the measuring points increase with the simulation time.

The Federal Mining Act (Bundesberggesetz, BBergG) was introduced to govern the use of the German subsurface. By paying royalties, companies obtain permissions to exploit resources in Germany. However, there is no transparent reporting on the paid royalties yet. Hence, the objective of this study is to provide an overview of the ownership and paid royalties. Furthermore, we discuss the sustainable use and management of the German subsurface. Our study shows that the subsurface is partly state- and also company-owned. Lignite, for example, is privately owned. In contrast, hydrocarbons are state-owned. In 2017, for example, on average 13% was paid in royalties for gas and 11% for petroleum. These paid royalties however have minor impacts on state budgets. For instance, in Lower Saxony, the royalties amount to 189 million Euro or 0.6% of the state budget. Thus, state income from royalties is negligible small. However, local communities and property owners have no financial benefits, but can be socially and environmentally impacted. In other countries such as the USA, paid royalties are much more transparent and also landowners directly obtain royalties. For example, in the US states, Texas and Louisiana, private landowners get paid 25% royalties on resources extracted from their land. In Germany, the subsurface is also crucial for our energy transition (“Energiewende”) as the subsurface is gradually used to extract and store energy. Thus, we propose to adapt the current Federal Mining Act to also account for environmental and social impacts providing a sustainable use and management of the subsurface.

The social license to operate of projects in applied geosciences and engineering has been an issue since the days of Georg Agricola. Its importance for the reputation of companies has increased in recent years. This is due to the public's increased environmental awareness, the desire for more transparency regarding commodity supply chains (circular economy), and especially the perception of catastrophic events such as dam breaches at tailings ponds.

The institutionalized and private public's demand for more information introduces new challenges for operators. Most conflicts between stakeholders and companies occur during periods of change in projects.

However, from the operational point of view, only securing and strengthening the social licence to operate leads to the creation of a positive atmosphere. For this purpose, modern geomonitoring concepts are necessary. A modern geomonitoring integrates a variety of geospatial and engineering measurement techniques and sensors, from space, air, ground and subsurface. This fusion creates a transparent, spatial and temporal understanding of processes that must be communicated to stakeholders.

Geomonitoring therefore represents an important tool and supports open and transparent communication and transfer. Stakeholders see the integration of geomonitoring, risk management and communication into operational practice as evidence that the company is pursuing sustainable development. In this way, the basis for social acceptance of current but also future projects in applied geosciences and engineering is created.

Every country has a different approach to of climate change adaptation based on local context and needs. This presentation gives an overview how the Netherlands and Germany approach sustainability, and how these differences impacted the energy transition process. Multi-Stakeholder processes have been one of the most crucial features during this process. Germany has proven to be a pioneer in the renewable energy technology and implemented the energy transition through an integrated long-term governance perspective. Public awareness is created through economic incentives, like a tariff-system that is supposed to support renewable energy producers with attractive rates. The Netherlands proved to be a pioneer in "transition management frameworks" throughout the process initiating new ways for coalitions between research and policy making to create storylines alongside already existing agendas of various governmental bodies. By now, the governing authorities in the Netherlands have implemented sustainability agendas on every level. The Netherlands create sustainable project outcomes by

• Multi-Stakeholder dialogues
• Analyzing and planning every project from a long-term sustainability perspective
• Putting the SDG framework at the center of project design on every governmental level
• Creating public awareness

In Germany sustainability adaptation projects are created, if municipalities see an urgent need or receive special funding for pilot projects. However, by creating a multi-stakeholder communication plan including municipalities, utilities committees, urban planners, local academia and local fund givers as well the engaged public, new ideas can be generated in an joint effort. This can broaden up finance opportunities and leads, as in the Netherlands, to more holistic projects.

Geosciences co-shape the human niche, that is, the planetary network of twinned natural and cultural landscapes. Bundled by global supply chains, human agents (individuals, groups, institutions, corporations) alter the human niche through engineering, production processes and consumption patterns [1]. The resulting [planetary] social-ecological systems exhibit complex-adaptive dynamics. In turn, human agents face system features like counter-intuitive behaviour, irreversible path-dependency and multi-facet values and interests. Geoethical thinking explores cultural substrates that nurture human agents' skills and operational circumstances when facing suchlike ["wicked"] system features.

Geoethics is about responsible geosciences. Initially, geoscientists conceived geoethics for geoscientists, that is, their professional functions in various societal contexts [2]. Subsequently, geoethics evolved and diversified, including a plurality of value systems. For example, incorporating Kohlberg's hierarchy of moral adequacy and Jonas's imperative of responsibility into geoethics leads to formulating a 'geo-rationale', namely, to act with: 'agent-centricity, virtue-focus, responsibility focus, knowledge-based, all-actor-inclusiveness, and universal-rights based'. Irrespectively of different settings, geoethics offers (philosophical) work-horses when handling geoscience challenges in their societal contexts; for example, [nuclear] repositories. Geoethics takes the shape of an epistemic, moral hybrid for citizens interacting with the Earth system [3].

1. Rosol C, Nelson S, Renn J (2017) Introduction: In the machine room of the Anthropocene. Anthr Rev 4:2–8. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053019617701165

2. Peppoloni S, Di Capua G (2015) Geoethics, the role and responsibility of geoscientists, Lyell Coll. Geological Society of London, London

3. Bohle M, Marone E (2021) Geoethics, a Branding for Sustainable Practices. Sustainability 13:895. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13020895

n 2013, the German Site Selection Act (StandAG) restarted the search for a site with the best possible safety for a geological repository for the high-level radioactive waste produced in Germany. This Act describes the principles of the Site Selection Procedure as a science-based, participative, transparent, self-questioning and learning process. The search area will be narrowed down increasingly over the course of three phases: starting with the entire federal territory, followed by surface exploration in site regions and subsurface exploration of sites, and finally a proposal for a geological repository site offering the best possible safety to host and retard the German high-level radioactive waste.

The Bundesgesellschaft für Endlagerung mbH (BGE) is responsible for the implementation of the site selection procedure. With an Interim Report published in 2020, first results were presented, outlining sub-areas in preparation for defining the site regions. These 90 sub-areas are characterized by favorable geological conditions for storage of high-level radioactive waste and are located in the host rocks claystone, crystalline rock and rock salt.

As a large number of stakeholders are involved, public participation and community engagement are mandatory in all phases of the site selection procedure. The Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management (BASE) acts as the regulator in the Site Selection Procedure and organizes public participation. At the BGE we inform the public about our work by using digital information formats such as online consultation, explanatory videos and visual presentation of relevant data and models.

Geoscientific know-how is essential to tackle pressing challenges: climate change, geohazards, energy and raw material supply. However, technical expertise alone – without considering societal dimensions – will not be sufficient to find sustainable solutions to these problems. Geoethics literacy is needed to qualify Geoscientists to work responsibly on complex tasks at the interface to society. Also, Geoethics deals with our own Geoscience philosophy and can therefore help to address current problems in Geoscience academia – e.g. gender inequalities and sexism, studying with mental or physical illnesses and falling university entrant numbers. In teaching, Geoethics can be approached through five questions: How do we relate 1) to our own discipline, its history and its methods; 2) among each other; 3) to the environment; 4) to other disciplines; and 5) to society? This 'inside-out' approach ties up with existing courses in scientific working methods. These can be taken to the next level by teaching a holistic epistemology of Geosciences, which lies the foundation for a critical reflection upon the methods. Conducting field work, which plays a central role in Geosciences, raises many ethical questions. This is only one reason, why 'Geo-ethics' is needed and 'ethics' for itself falls short. These thoughts are fundamental for evaluating the role of Geoscientists in interdisciplinary teams and as part of society. Geoethics equips Geoscientists with the ability to critically reflect upon their work and its ethical implications to identify future-oriented solutions. Appropriate teaching formats should be developed – and implemented – to convey geoethical aspects in modern Geoscience study programs.

For some years now, the Hessian Agency for Nature Conservation, Environment and Geology (HLNUG) is focusing its 3D-modeling activities on urban areas, aiming to contribute to both integrated modeling and urban planning (e.g., Lehné et al. 2017, Lehné et al. 2013, Budde et al. 2017).

Experiences gained in the frame of the project “Darmstadt_3D”, which is delivering the urban subsurface including the technical infrastructure (sewage system, foundations, etc.), now are adopted for a working area in northern Hesse, southeast of Kassel. Geologically it is located in the Hessian depression and mainly characterized by WNW-ESE trending graben system of Kassel, and major features perpendicular to the main direction of the graben structure.

The just emerging 3D geological model is addressing the stratigraphic horizons Quaternary, Tertiary as well as the lower triassic formations Röt, Solling and Hardegsen and based on 449 quality checked drillings, of which several also have been used for the construction of 8 cross sections that help to better elaborate the fault network. In addition, geological maps and already existing cross sections are considered. First results show a complex tectonic situation with displacement rates that often exceed 100m. They also confirm the conceptual approach to be expedient and suitable for the intended extension of the working area to the area of Kassel. On the way the geological 3D-content will be parameterized for downstream applications such as modeling groundwater, and radon potentials as well as enriched by urban subsurface infrastructure in order to get a fully integrated urban 3D-information system.

In 2020, the Bundesgesellschaft für Endlagerung mbH (BGE) published the Sub-areas Interim Report, identifying areas with favorable geological conditions for a deep repository site for storage of high-level radioactive waste in Germany.

One key step was the identification of geological settings, where potential host rock formations (claystone, rock salt and crystalline rock) fulfil legally defined minimum requirements, e.g. depth (> 300 m), areal extension (varying between host rocks), and vertical thickness (> 100 m). Therefore, we examined 21 existing regional 3-D models generated by various German federal and state authorities with a different focus, detail and coverage (e.g. Rhine Graben, North German Basin). Hence, we had to deal with a large amount of data, different model scales, inhomogeneity and possible inconsistencies at the state boundaries.

In order to identify the potential host rock formations within the geological 3-D models and to ensure an equal processing, we generated a semi-automated workflow in SKUA-GOCAD^TM that extracted areas that fulfil the minimum requirements. However, the heterogeneous input data produced inconsistencies in the results of the workflow that required extensive quality control and correction. Another challenge was related to thickness calculations in the presence of fault surfaces. We quantified potential inaccuracies and showed that their impact is negligible with respect to the model scale.

Considering our approach, we provided a transparent and reproducible workflow within the search for a repository site for storage of high-level radioactive waste.

The Swiss Geological Survey (SGS) produces a suite of 3D geological models – both structural and parametric - in an established production environment, on a nation-wide basis. Output consists of regional-scale models of the deep subsurface (e.g. geological and temperature model of the Swiss Molasse Basin) as well as local-scale models of the shallow subsurface, with varying degrees of content and complexity. In addition, a new profile-based approach is currently being implemented – primarily using surface and shallow subsurface data - in order to expand the regional-scale model suite to cover the Jura region of Switzerland.

Modelling activities follow different approaches and workflows, depending on the types of available data and the planned uses of the various models. These data need to be in a geometrically, tectonically and stratigraphically harmonized state prior to modelling. This key requirement is made possible by the processes and standards that have been developed and implemented here at SGS e.g. legends, vector maps.

All of these models are stored and managed in the 3D database “GST” which is then used a source for directly publishing the 3D models to web- and app-based 3D-viewers or indirectly for other VR content. In the future, the SGS plans to enlarge the suite of models and streamline the production process.

Our presentation focuses on the latest developments as well as examples of the aforementioned regional- and local-scale models.

For decades the Ruhr Area in western Germany was dominated by extensive coal mining. Today, relicts of abandoned mines and the near-surface cavities are a hazard factor, for example at building sites. For an assessment of potential risks, the regional mining authority needs very detailed geological data. The calculation is based on the exact position of the coal seams at the Carboniferous surface and its loose rock covering.

To provide this, a very detailed 3D model of the shallow Paleozoic underground is build, reaching down to about 100 m. The Upper Carboniferous coal-bearing units were influenced by multiple phase tectonics and these complex structures were challenging to visualise and to model. Heterogeneous data of old mining sites, including plans of mine shafts as well as data of surface opening shafts, are combined with existing geological data and a high-resolution digital terrain model (cell size 1 m) in SKUA-GOCAD software. Challenging for the modelling process are the variable data types, scales and spatial accuracies. For example, plans of the mine shafts are partly older than 200 years and passed through numerous processing steps which had an impact on the positional accuracy. To harmonise the data, a manual constructed profile section network is used and a homogeneous data distribution is developed. The result is a 3D model of the shallow subsurface in the southern Ruhr Area with complex tectonic elements, combining geological and mining data. In accordance with the Geologiedatengesetz (GeolDG, 2020) all results will be stored and published in a GIS-database.

One of the many attractions of geoscience is the necessity to make predictions. That it is to say, to take observations made at a certain locality and extrapolate the inferences into areas where there is little or no data. For example, consider the Black Sea, a basin with limited data over an area that covers 423,000 km², and that contains a sedimentary thickness of up to 14 km. Data from the margins of the basin, for example from the Pontides or the Caucasus, can be used to determine the timing and nature of the sedimentary fill, but to do so, the context of regional geology is needed. Similarly, much of the geology of the Arabian Plate is known from outcrops mostly on the margins of the plate, and subsurface penetrations. Once again, a methodology is required to join this data together and predict between datapoints.

Two aspects of regional geology are key. Firstly, an understanding of the tectonic evolution of the region in question. This can be obtained from an integration of a geodynamic plate model with observations from the rock record. Deep seismic records also help elucidate tectonic history. Secondly, the application of a biostratigraphically-constrained sequence stratigraphic model that provides a high-resolution framework for correlation and implies a predictable stratigraphic architecture. Using such tools, geoscientists can utilise and integrate all the data at their disposal to make predictions into the unknown. These can be expressed as palaeogeographic maps with consequent application in the search for resources and carbon repositories.

Geological evidence and geodynamic modelling suggest that the Nile river system has been largely stable since its origins ~30 Ma. The Nile could have provided a long-term migration route for vertebrates including hominins between Eastern and Northern Africa. However, other geological data contradict such an old stabilisation of the course of the Nile. Fieldwork along the middle stretches of the Atbara River, the last tributary to the Nile before it crosses the Sahara, provides evidence for a complex fluvial history during the last 450 ka, with several periods of fluvial re-establishment that differ markedly in their fluvial style and hydrodynamics. While some rivers were dominated by gravelly and sandy braid bars, others had prominent fine-grained point bars, and some were perennial, while others showed high discharge variance, with significantly varying catchment areas. The fine-grained floodplain deposits contain different types of paleosols, but predominantly evidence seasonal and semi-arid conditions. The changes in river style, discharge dynamics and catchments can be attributed to Pleistocene climatic changes and to tectonic processes. The riverine landscapes of the Palaeoatbara were colonised by a diverse fauna including hominins which are represented by fossils and stone tool remains. The study of the sediments, fossils and archaeology along the middle Atbara, together with high-resolution age dating, provide new insights into the history of the Nile river system, and has implications for our understanding of early hominin migrations and the formation of modern ecosystems in Africa.

The incorporation of regional geologic knowledge is essential to solve multiple geological questions in any defined research area meaning that small-scale observations must fit with general regional interpretations as well as the tectonic and sedimentary setting. Conversely, in areas with sparse subsurface information, a conceptional knowledge of the observed area must be developed by incorporating and combining small-scale indications into a sound regional geologic model.

In this contribution, we collect some of these small-scale “puzzle pieces” observable along the western flank of the Eichsfeld-Altmark-Swell in Central Germany. This structure is assumed to form a roughly NNE-SSW-trending Permo-Triassic sedimentary high, which is constrained by reduced thickness, facies changes and unconformities in Late Permian to Late Triassic strata. In parts it is accompanied by areas where Zechstein is directly overlain by shaly to evaporitic Upper Buntsandstein/Middle Muschelkalk while several hundred meters of sandy Lower and Middle Buntsandstein are missing. We combine local observations published in cross-sections, outcrop situations, few boreholes and reflection seismics, which occur along a some 200 kilometres long strip in central Germany and attempt to put them in a regional geologic context. Our results for the spatial relationship of sedimentary basins and bordering normal faults as well as associated salt structures indicate that the western flank of the Altmark Swell was affected by huge sub-horizontal, decoupled movements (up to 5 km extension) along ramp-flat normal faults involving two evaporite detachments. Although sparse, some indications are available for gently dipping basement faults that accommodated these movements below the Zechstein salt.

This talk focusses on the Detfurth Formation of the Hessian Depression and aims to point out a modern way of subdividing the sedimentary record, serving as a profound basis in applied geoscientific disciplines such as geothermal exploration, hydrogeology, or 3D modelling. Particular attention is paid to aeolian sediments, as they have different rock properties compared to fluvial sediments.

Aeolian sediments are widespread along the western margin of the Hessian Depression, locally building up the entire Detfurth Formation. Towards the central Hessian Depression, they interfinger with aquatically deposited sediments of the Detfurth Formation, yet are widely traceable in its lower part. Interestingly, similar aeolianites regionally also occur above the Detfurth Claystone unit, and then usually were assigned to the Hardegsen Formation, following the fining-upward principle of the Buntsandstein “Folgen” – with some doubts remaining (Dersch-Hansmann et al. 2013, SDGG).

Based on detailed sedimentological recordings of core drillings, a facies model of aeolian and alluvial sand plains, braided rivers, deltas, and the central playa lake system is proposed (Hug-Diegel 2021, ZDGG). The correlation scheme also illustrates that spatial relationships of the Detfurth subformations in the Hessian Depression clearly deviate from a “layer-cake geometry”. For geogenetic reasons and due to their special rock properties, the aeolianites should be combined in a separate subformation, but assigned to the Detfurth Formation. This is consistent with the idea of a dual subdivision of the Buntsandstein into both regional geochronologic units (allostratigraphic “Folgen”; Lutz et al. 2005, Newsl. Strat.) and – independent – lithofacies-stratigraphic units (formations).

The Sprendlinger Horst represents the northern extension of the Odenwald basement which is flanking the Upper Rhine Graben to the northeast. Several small, isolated basins filled by lacustrine sediments of Eocene age are known from the area. Most of them represent the filling of maar-type volcanic structures, such as the lakes at Messel, Offenthal and Groß Zimmern. Only Lake Prinz von Hessen near Darmstadt represents a small pull-apart basin. High resolution palynological analyses of drill cores from these four nearly coeval lake basins allows to reconstruct the vegetation during the last natural greenhouse system in Central Europe.

Quantitative palynological data from the deposits of the four lakes prove that the vegetation generally shows the same succession with a recolonization phase at the beginning, followed by a recovery and a terminal climax phase. The record may be incomplete for some of the lakes, but an extensive data set including nearly 1000 samples shows that each basin has its unique story to tell. For example, in Messel the undisturbed record of about 600.000 years reveals the influence of orbital forcing on the climate and the composition as well as on the diversity of the climax vegetation during the early middle Eocene. In contrast, at lakes Prinz von Hessen and Groß Zimmern regional tectonic and seismic activity had a more pronounced influence on the paleoenvironment than orbitally controlled climate change.

GFZ Data Services, an international research data repository for the Earth sciences domain and Allocating Agent for the IGSN Global Sample Number (IGSN), is operated under the umbrella of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences.

GFZ Data Services increases the discoverability and reusability of data through (1) the provision of comprehensive domain-specific data description via standardised and machine-readable metadata with controlled domain vocabularies; (2) complementing the metadata with comprehensive and standardised technical data descriptions or reports; and (3) by embedding the research data in wider context by providing cross-references through Persistent Identifiers (DOI, IGSN, ORCID, Fundref) to related research products (text, data, software) and people or institutions involved.

The new Website of GFZ Data Services has further developed from a searchable data portal (only) to an information point for data publications and data management. This includes information on metadata, data formats, the data publication workflow, FAQ, links to different versions of our metadata editor and downloadable data description templates. Specific data publication guidance is complemented by more general information on data management, like a data management roadmap and links to the data catalogue of GFZ Data Services, the IGSN catalogue of GFZ and RI@GFZ – the data and research infrastructure search portal of GFZ.

Since October 2020, GFZ is a DataCite member. This membership will enable and promote active participation in the current and future venues of technological and service-oriented developments related to the persistent identification of research output(s).

Geo.X is the research network for geosciences in the Berlin and Potsdam metropolitan region and integrates five universities and six extramural research institutions. Our partners are committed to a FAIR and sustainable handling of research data and infrastructures. For this purpose, we established a search portal for the geoscientific laboratory infrastructure and related research data of the network partners (LI@Geo.X). The portal aims to increase the visibility and accessibility of the partner institutions’ infrastructures, data, models, and projects, and thus supports scientists in implementing collaborative research projects. LI@Geo.X is based on state-of-the-art thesauri adapted to the Earth System Sciences (e.g., NASA GCMD, DFG’s instrumentation category keys).

For each laboratory, LI@Geo.X provides a brief description comprising information on the instruments, analytical methods, contact persons, partner institution, link to German and English websites, and, if given, an assignment to a laboratory complex. In addition, we will supplement information on user access to laboratories and user regulations soon. The next stage of development is to include information on software and data used and produced in the laboratories.

Current technical advancements of LI@Geo.X encompass:

• decentral editing and curation of laboratory’s metadata,
• semantic search options and extended filter functions,
• a web-based user interface for the submission of new or modified metadata records.

LI@Geo.X is an ongoing cooperation project and can be accessed via https://www.geo-x.net/geox-laboratory-infrastructure-search/. The portal presently includes about 200 entries from all 11 partner institutions. LI@Geo.X also collaborates with other networks such as the Archaeometry Network Berlin-Brandenburg and is embedded in the NFDI4Earth landscape.

EPOS (the European Plate Observing System) is a pan-European e-infrastructure framework with the goal of improving and facilitating the access, use, and re-use of Solid Earth science data. The EPOS Thematic Core Service Multi-scale Laboratories (TCS MSL) represents a community of European Solid Earth sciences laboratories including rock and magma high-temperature and high-pressure experimental facilities, electron microscopy, micro-beam analysis, analogue modelling of tectonic, geodynamic, and volcanological processes, paleomagnetism, and analytical laboratories.

Experimental data from these laboratories often provide the backbone for scientific publications, but are often available only as supplementary information to research articles or in a non-digital form (printed tables, figures) with little to no chance for data discovery. Moreover, much of the source data remains unpublished, inaccessible, and often not preserved for the long term.

The TCS MSL is committed to making Earth science laboratory data “Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR)”. For this purpose, the TCS MSL encourages the community to share their data via DOI-referenced, citable data publications through partner research data repositories. To facilitate this and ensure the provision of rich metadata, agreed within the MSL community, we offer user-friendly tools, plus the necessary data management expertise, to support all aspects of data publishing. The resulting data publications are also exposed through a designated TCS MSL online portal that brings together DOI-referenced data publications from partner research data repositories (https://epos-msl.uu.nl/).

Since the discipline of ‘geochemistry’ was first defined in 1838, geochemical data has been pervasively acquired and used in the Earth, environmental and planetary sciences and become fundamental for understanding past, present, and future processes in natural systems. Initially, geochemical data was published in hard-copy literature, but as analytical systems became computerised, major digital databases emerged (EarthChem, PetDB, OZCHEM and GEOROC) which revolutionised data access. They have proven the power of re-use of geochemical data around thematic, national and global themes, and now enable new Big Data science paradigms in geochemistry.

In response to Open Access policies and science demands, even more geochemical database systems are emerging at national, programmatic, and subdomain levels. They are not coordinated: each has different schemas/vocabularies and analyses can be duplicated within them, making global merging of datasets complex. Very little data is FAIR (Wilkinson et al., 2016) and the lack of agreed standards and unique identifiers makes online interoperability time consuming.

Following the example of OneGeology, which was developed to increase online accessibility of geological map data, we propose an equivalent global initiative - OneGeochemistry. The vision is to establish a global geochemical data network of distributed repositories that facilitates and promotes discovery/access to geochemical data. Fundamental to OneGeochemistry is coordination and collaboration amongst international geochemical data providers and infrastructures such as the NFDI4Earth, EPOS, Auscope, etc., to create community-agreed standards, controlled vocabularies and protocols for each of the fundamental geochemical and isotopic systems [i.e., inorganic, organic, isotopes (Ar-Ar, U-Pb, Sm-Nd etc.)].

Measured data of the Earth’s surface heat flow are rare observables for heat transport processes in the Earth interior. Precise knowledge of heat flow is thus fundamental (i) to describe the Earth’s thermal field, (ii) to decipher plate-tectonic and geodynamic processes and (iii) to understand natural or artificial utilized geological thermal systems – across all spatial scales and timely domains. Heat flow data are documented in more than 1,400 publications and are collected by the International Heat Flow Commission (IHFC) of the IASPEI/IUGG for almost 60 years now. The quality of the data compilation is heterogeneous and reflects the long history of technical and methodological developments during that period. The associated databases on national and international level are in general of undocumented quality and poor usability.

Here, we present a community driven-approach to develop a new, sustainable heat-flow research data infrastructure with quality proofed, up-to-date, well-documented, extended, enriched and restructured heat-flow data for the geoscientific community. The new database will reflect criteria of FAIR and OPEN data policy, will support the interoperability with other geoscientific data services, and will interconnect to persistent identifiers. To fill the new database with curated quality-proven heat-flow data, the available reconnaissance data are currently reviewed by global heat-flow experts in a unique international collaborative revision approach supported by the IHFC and lead by a Task Force of the International Lithosphere Program (ILP).

Different controls and couplings between tectonics and climate-driven erosion have been suggested to explain the topographic and structural architecture of the Andes. One aspect of controversial discussions is the late Neogene incision of the Central Andean Plateau margin that has been interpreted as either the effect of climate change and increased river discharge on an already high plateau, or the effect of relatively young surface uplift. On the eastern flank of the Andean Plateau, ~4 Ma incision has been reported for two canyons in Bolivia and southeastern Peru (over a distance of >1250 km). However, there are still too many uncertainties concerning the spatio-temporal patterns of crustal shortening, erosion, and surface uplift to evaluate climatic and tectonic influences, especially in Peru. Studies that evaluate climate, erosion, and deformation histories in concert as well as along-strike continuations or variations are needed.

We contribute an extension of existing low-temperature thermochronometer data from three, up to 190-km-long transects spanning the Andean Plateau, the Eastern Cordillera including canyons and high-elevations, and the Subandean Zone in southeastern Peru. We present 46 new apatite (U-Th)/He (~1–41 Ma), 23 new zircon (U-Th)/He (~4–284 Ma), 21 new apatite fission-track (~3–63 Ma), and 11 new zircon fission-track dates (~14–37 Ma) from a total of 53 bedrock samples. We evaluate a representative set of samples' thermal histories with respects to deformation and incision of the plateau margin and discuss along-strike variations in the exhumation signal (onset and magnitude).

Constraining rates of landscape evolution is a necessary pre-requisite for reconstructing the spatiotemporal evolution of the Earth´s surface. In our study, we present new zircon and apatite fission track and (U-Th)/He ages as well as catchment-wide ¹⁰Be-derived erosion rates to determine exhumation and erosion rates in the Nock Mountains, an elevated-low relief landscape in the Eastern Alps. Zircon fission track and zircon (U-Th)/He analyses yielded cooling ages of ~90 and ~80 Ma, respectively, which we interpret to reflect late Cretaceous cooling after Eoalpine metamorphism. Apatite fission track and (U-Th)/He ages are significant younger and range from ca. 35-28 Ma. Time-temperature history modelling of the thermochronological ages suggests enhanced cooling in the Eocene followed by thermal stagnation. Our results show that amount of erosion since ~35 Ma does not exceed 2-3 km and that average erosion rates did not significantly change. Assuming that rock exhumation occurred by erosion only, the long-term erosion rate is ~50-100 mm//kyr and therefore of similar magnitude as the short-term ¹⁰Be erosion rates that range from ~90-200 mm/kyr, despite the different timescales of the methods. Our data support the notion that the Nock Mountains represent an area of long-lasting stability although tectonic and glacial-interglacial cycles affected the Eastern Alps since ~35 Ma.

Geoscientific concepts and hypotheses are usually formulated based on empirical data from the field or the laboratory (induction). After translation into models they can be applied to case study scenarios (deduction). However, the other way around – expressing hypotheses explicitly by models and test these by empiric data – is a rarely touched trail. There are several models tailored to investigate the boundary conditions and processes that generate, mobilise, route and eventually deposit sediment in a landscape. Thereby, the last part, sediment deposition, is usually omitted. Essentially, there is no model that explicitly focuses on mapping out the characteristics of sedimentary deposits – the material that is used by many disciplines to reconstruct landscape evolution. The R package sandbox is a model framework that allows creating and analysing virtual sediment sections for exploratory, explanatory, forecasting and inverse research questions. sandbox is a probabilistic and rule-based model framework for a wide range of possible applications. It has been advanced and linked to another model to allow the full work flow of modelling luminescence measurements. This contribution introduces news about recent developments and shows a set of applications.

We study spatial patterns of sediment production in two catchments of the Coastal Cordillera (Chile) situated in semi-arid and mediterranean bioclimates. To do so, we measure bedrock and detrital apatite trace elements as well as apatite cooling ages with the U/Pb, fission track, U-Th(-Sm)/He thermochronometric systems. The compositional and geochronologic data measured in bedrock are run through a Principal Component Analysis and a Support Vector Machine clustering algorithm to find the parameters that are best suited to trace sediment provenance at sub-catchment scale. Next, we analyse the distribution of the same parameters within the detritus to infer the relative contribution of different areas of the catchments. We find that spatial variations of bedrock cooling age and geochemical composition are significant even within small-scale (10-100 km²) monolithological catchments. Therefore, the combination of detrital apatite geochronology and geochemistry allows discrimination among source areas with acceptable confidence. This methodology has the potential to identify the main drivers of centennial to millennial sediment production, which will be tested in the following research steps.

The dynamic behavior of glacial retreat following the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), which is globally diachronous, is poorly understood. Along strike of the northern Alpine margin, multiple lobes of large foreland glaciers left a complex morpho-sedimentary record. While the reconstructed LGM ice extent is laterally constant in the west, it shows significant variations in the central and eastern part. We use these local geologic variations to explore how regional climatic conditions relate to global climate during this period of rapid late Pleistocene climate change. The chronology for this interval has been well-constrained in Switzerland, but radiometric ages have only been reported for a few locations along the Alpine Foreland in Germany. In this study, we employ cosmogenic 36Cl in limestone to constrain the in-situ exposure age of glacial erratics situated on moraine walls of the Iller Piedmont Glacier. We sampled erratic boulders along a transect perpendicular to three moraine ridges previously interpreted to represent the LGM along with two post-LGM retreat stands. Our preliminary raw data show that the sampled lithology provides internally consistent, reproducible, and geologically meaningful dates. We discuss our results taking into account limestone weathering, erosion and local postglacial landscape stabilization, and apply appropriate correction factors to obtain more accurate ages. This exposure age data gives first insights into the spatio-temporal patterns of glacial retreat in the northern Alpine Foreland, which can be used to reconstruct Central European paleoclimate in the late Pleistocene.

This study is dedicated to a quantitative assessment of two different-scale impulsive geomorphic events in proglacial areas. The study site is the Djankuat River catchment in the Caucuses. The first event is an ice-wall collapse of a buried ice outcrop. We conducted a repeated UAV survey with an annual interval (September 2019 – August 2020) and a two-day interval (August 18 – 20, 2020). For a 3,950 m² area, the defined material (both sediment and melting ice) transfer in two days was 1,880 m³, while for the annual interval was 6,330 m³. The event contribution is almost 1/3 of the total annual change. The second event is the lateral moraine breakthrough that happened in July 2015 due to the preceding 227 mm precipitation per week. The evaluation was based on DEMs obtained from satellite image stereo pairs. About 134 thousand m³ of material was removed with the formation a cone in the valley bottom (volume ≈ 101 thousand m³). Another 81 thousand m³ was transported to the Djankuat River during the following 2 years due to active erosion of the new-formed channel. The volume of material removed from the Djankuat River catchment due to the event is at least 20 times higher than the average annual sediment runoff in years with the usual formation of sediment runoff. This research illustrates the importance of the individual extreme events assessment since they determine the primary changes in the proglacial terrain.

The study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (project No. 19-17-00181).

Watershed landscapes of the Borisoglebsk Upland and Suzdal Opolie are characterized by absence of the well-developed early Holocene paleosols suggesting dominantly negative sediment budget. Detailed study of Retisols revealed polycyclic type of pedogenesis during the Early Holocene. Discontinuous deposition with certain interruptions (but without distinct buried soil formation) occurred only within closed depressions and gully fans. The second part of the Holocene prior to the widespread human settlement left more substantial traces in soil and sediment record. It is identified both at locations dominated by denudation (evidences of multiple topsoil truncation in Atlantic and Subatlantic) and at zones of alternating incision and infill of small linear erosion features. Such extremes were most likely associated with combination of several triggers including natural forest fires and high-magnitude rainfall or snowmelt runoff events. The last phases of increased hillslope and fluvial activity within the study area can be related to increased human interference, starting about 1600-900 years ago. Latest period of intensive gully growth can most likely be attributed to the XIXth Century land tenure reform and peak tillage cultivation after the World War II when most of the study area gullies experienced significant linear growth, bottom incisions and appearance of several new gully branches. Rates of the most recent soil redistribution on slopes decreased significantly over the last several decades due to combination of natural and anthropogenic impacts.

3D-modelling based on a series of geological exposures and cores up to 7 m deep allowed to reveal the structure, stratigraphy and chronology of a local sediment sink on the watershed of one of the Late Saalian glacial uplands at the center of the Russian Plain. This local section representing an infill of a kettle hole was initially occupied by the shallow stagnant water body during the Eemian up to the Late Weichselian, which had periodically dried and transformed into the forested bog. The Late Pleistocene to Holocene transition was associated with most dramatic environmental changes and abrupt fluctuations. Response in the local geomorphodynamics first involved activation of mass movements followed by the gully incision reaching the site by regressive head knickpoint retreat. The observed sediment record provides evidences of at least 4 linear erosion incision-infill cycles. The first incision into the gradually undulating surface composed by lacustrine and colluvial deposits and its infill by stratified colluvial silts occurred not later than 6.5 cal. ka BP. It is fixed by the next incision phase infilled by pedo-sediments of reworked humic, eluvial and sub-eluvial horizons of the upper slope soils enriched by pyrogenic charcoal. The third incision stage can be linked to regressive growth of the main gully head and its branches (ca. 1.4 cal. ka BP) triggered by the onset of cut-and-burn agriculture practices determining conditions favorable for active deposition of agrogenic colluvium. Modern gully incision was preceded at least by another infill phase and occurred between 1941-1968 AD.

Nonconformity surfaces are key features to understand the relations among climate, lithosphere and tectonic movements in Earth history. One of the most prominent stratigraphic surfaces in Central European is the post-Variscan nonconformity separating the metamorphic Variscan basement from non-metamorphic platform deposits starting in the Upper Carboniferous, but more widely distributed since the Permian. This study aimed to analyze and distinguish the physical and chemical processes happening during exposure of the surface as well as during subsequent burial diagenesis on a drill core located on the eastern graben shoulder of the Upper Rhine Graben. The core penetrates through a Lower Permian volcano-sedimentary succession into the crystalline basement which here consists of Cadomian plutonic rocks. Samples were analyzed across the nonconformity by means of polarization microscopy, environmental scanning electron microscope, X-Ray diffraction, X-ray fluorescence and Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry. In both segments, secondary minerals are dominated by illite and a mix-layer phase of illite and smectite (I/S). The corrected weathering indices indicate an intermediate to unweathered degree in the gabbroic diorite and an extreme to unweathered degree in the basaltic andesite. The τ value for both parts indicates an abnormal enrichment of K, Rb, and Cs. Accompanying minerals such as adularia suggest subsequent overprint by (K-rich) fluids during burial diagenesis which promoted the conversion from smectite to illite. Overall, a new workflow to eliminate distractions for paleoclimate evaluation and evolution has been developed. Our study shows that features of supergene physical and chemical paleo-weathering can be disentangled by a multi-proxy approach.

The North West Shelf of Australia represents an extensive tropical carbonate ramp and forms an important template for the interpretation of similar systems found within the sedimentary record. Yet, little is known about the development of the distally steepened ramp during the mid-to-late Quaternary, a period during which NW-Australia was subject to high-frequency glacioeustatic changes in sea level and climate. This research presents core and seismic-reflection data from a mid to outer ramp transect at the Northwest Shelf. The investigated interval displays a distinct pattern with alternating changes in core color from dark to light. Dark intervals formed during humid interglacials and are composed of calcitic skeletal carbonates and elevated amounts of fluvial-derived siliciclastic input. Light intervals are predominantly comprised of inorganic precipitated aragonitic carbonates, which formed during arid glacial lowstands. Humid interglacials are characterized by limited sedimentation across the Northwest Shelf of Australia. Yet, substantial amounts of skeletal carbonates were deposited during the Holocene and Marine Isotope Stage 11.

The presented results are consequential for the interpretation of seismic and outcrop data found within the rock record, as they emphasize the strong variability of carbonate production in response to glacioeustatic changes in climate, sea level, and antecedent topography. It further highlights a system, which predominantly produces and exports inorganic-derived aragonite during glacial low stands, thereby offering an alternative to the commonly applied platform model of “highstand-shedding”.

Aragonite and high-Mg calcite are abundant in modern, neritic temperate water systems but are nearly absent from their fossil counterparts. Dissolution of these metastable mineral phases will often leave no visible trace in the sedimentary record. Furthermore, it has been proposed that dolomitization is driven by reflux of mesohaline, aragonite undersaturated waters and that dolomite crystal growth is tightly coupled to aragonite dissolution in a temperate carbonate slope system. This study aims to clarify the processes responsible for this aragonite loss and associated dolomite formation in temperate carbonates. Biomarkers and microscopic techniques in combination with pore water analysis are used to investigate sediment cores from IODP Site U1460 on the outer ramp of the western Australian Shelf. It is shown that synsedimentary aragonite dissolution is negligible but increases significantly in a burial depth of ~ 5 m. This increase is controlled by the onset of incipient sulfate reduction, which is also interpreted to lower the kinetic inhibition for dolomite formation. However, the intensity of aragonite dissolution does not increase linearly but shows clear variations based on the availability of reactive organic matter, which is higher in interglacial compared to glacial intervals. Aragonite dissolution and Mg²⁺ loss from high-Mg calcite contribute to the precipitation of dolomite preferentially in interglacial sediments. This mechanism provides an indirect link between dolomite formation, aragonite dissolution, and orbital cycles. The outcome of this study contributes to a better understanding of the timing and mechanism of aragonite dissolution.

Microplastic pollution has been reported from coral reef systems all over the tropics. Exposure to microplastics has several negative impacts on coral health. Despite this potential risk for reef systems, the controlling processes for microplastics dispersion and accumulation in reef sediments are still understudied. Presented here is a study of microplastics (125 µm – 5 mm) distribution in two tropic atoll reef platforms in Kepulauan Seribu, Indonesia. Sediment samples were collected in different facies zones within the reef platform. Microplastics were concentrated using density floatation and characterized by light and scanning electron microscopy. Some particles were identified as polypropylene using micro Fourier transform infrared (µ-FT-IR) spectroscopy. All recovered microplastics were classified as secondary microplastics, derived from marine and local sources, with fibers as the most abundant type. Microplastics are showing similar transport and accumulation behavior as fine siliciclastic grains. The abundance of microplastic is controlled by the proximity to the source area of larger plastic debris and hydrodynamic processes. Microplastics are not only present in low energy environments but also high energy settings such as e.g. the reef crest. Processes that contribute to accumulation in reef sediments are biofouling, interlocking, and the creation of compound grains. Microplastics are present in sediment close to the seafloor (0 -3.5 cm) but also in a depth between 3.5 and 7 cm. Microplastic particles from below 3.5 cm are unlikely to be remobilized under modal weather conditions in the studied equatorial reefs. Subtidal reef sediment therefore can be regarded as a permanent sink for microplastics.

Cherts, including silicified carbonates, are one of the most detailed and alteration resistant archives of near-surface environments. Yet, the information disclosed in form of stable isotope ratios of Si and O cannot be confidently translated into conditions prevailing at the Earth surface in deep time. Thermometry based on δ¹⁸O is compromised by the lack of knowledge about the fluid’s δ¹⁸O value and attempts to determine Si sources or temperatures from δ³⁰Si remain unsatisfying.

We investigated carbonate silicification in a Lower Cambrian silicified zebra dolomite that we analyzed for δ³⁰Si by laser ablation MC-ICP-MS and δ¹⁸O using SIMS. Successively replaced carbonate layers show systematically decreasing δ¹⁸O values from 14.4 to 13.4 ‰ and systematically decreasing δ³⁰Si values from 0.9 ‰ to ca. -2.0 ‰. We show that quantitative Si precipitation in a closed system best explains these data, requiring positive ε³⁰Si values, which has long been proposed for thermodynamic equilibrium using ab-initio models. We exploit the modal abundances of the successively formed silica phases to quantify the fractional Si depletion from the fluid and to infer the Ɛ³⁰Si values. Using a temperature calibration based on an ab-initio model (Dupuis et al., 2015), we determine the temperatures of carbonate replacement to be approx. 60°C and calculate the fluid δ¹⁸O to have been approx. -11 ‰, which is consistent with a meteoric water source. This approach opens a new avenue for determining initial fluid δ¹⁸O values in deep time and could thus solve long-standing disputes about hot vs. temperate Precambrian oceans.

The Eocene ´greenhouse´ climate represents the warmest period within the Cenozoic and has therefore become especially interesting as an analogue for estimated future climate scenarios. For paleo-climate reconstructions, bivalves represent valuable proxy archives with a high temporal resolution, due to their distinct, periodic layering (growth increments). However, interpreting environmental signals from fossil bivalves can be challenging, because of the species-specific mineralogy of the shells (calcite or aragonite) and its associated geochemical behaviour, as well as its resilience against diagenetic alteration.

For the current study several middle Eocene (Lutetian) aragonitic valves of the species Venericor planicosta from different localities of the Anglo-Paris-Basin were analysed. To disentangle the environmental signals from possible diagenetic or biological influences, EPMA mapping, Cathodoluminescence (CL), as well as SEM imaging were employed. The CL and the SEM analyses revealed no increased incorporation of Mn or an extensive recrystallization respectively, suggesting a pristine preservation of the original shell material. These findings are further underlined by results of EPMA mapping of Mg, Na, Sr and S, which display oscillating element distribution patterns with increased element ratios (Me/Ca) along growth increment boundaries. Moreover, an increasing trend of the Sr/Ca ratio along the growth axis of each shell, points to potential ontogenetic effects. The Me/Ca ratios pattern are similar in all specimens, independent from their geological age or sample location and are not expected for diagenetically influenced material. Accordingly, the aragonitic shells are considered as excellent preserved archives with a high potential to resolve Eocene seasonality, e.g. by using δ¹⁸O and ∆₄₇.

Along the eastern front of the Teton Range, northeastern Basin-and-Range Province, well-preserved fault scarps that formed across moraines, river terraces and other geomorphological features indicate that multiple earthquakes ruptured the range-bounding Teton normal fault after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Here we use high-resolution digital elevation models derived from Lidar data to determine the vertical slip distribution along-strike of the Teton fault from 54 topographic profiles across tectonically offset geomorphological features along the entire Teton Range front. (Hampel et al., Geosphere, in press, https://doi.org/10.1130/GES02370.1). We find that offset LGM moraines and glacially striated surfaces show higher vertical displacements than younger fluvial terraces, which formed at valley exits upstream of LGM terminal moraines. Our results reveal that the tectonic offsets preserved in the faults scarps are post-LGM in age and that the postglacial slip distribution along-strike of the Teton fault is asymmetric with respect to the Teton Range center, with the maximum vertical displacements (27-23 m) being located north of Jenny Lake and along the southwestern shore of Jackson Lake. As indicated by earlier 3D numerical models, this asymmetric slip distribution results from postglacial unloading of the Teton fault, which experienced loading by the Yellowstone ice cap and valley glaciers in the Teton Range during the last glaciation.

The northeastward motion of the Tibetan Plateau along the Altyn Tagh strike-slip fault causes thrust faulting in three parallel mountain ranges (Qilian Shan, Daxue Shan, Danghe Nan Shan) in the plateau interior, and leads to NNE-directed crustal shortening and plateau growth. While slip rates at the plateau margin (i.e. along the Qilian Shan and the Altyn Tagh fault) are well constrained, rates of thrust faulting and the strain distribution in the plateau interior remain poorly resolved. Here, we use field investigations, a high-resolution DEM, and ¹⁰Be exposure dating to quantify the shortening rate across the Danghe Nan Shan thrust fault from fluvial terraces, which are deformed by a growing NNE-vergent anticline (Xu et al., Tectonics, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020TC006584). ¹⁰Be ages from two terrace levels range from 70±5 to 92±7 ka. When combined with uplift values of 37–68 m along the fold hinge, the ¹⁰Be ages yield a mean uplift rate of 0.6±0.2 mm/year. Using the cross-sectional area of the fold and the subsurface geometry of the listric thrust fault, we obtain a shortening rate of 0.8±0.2 mm/year, which is consistent with the rate of elastic strain accumulation recorded by GPS data. Together with published fault slip rates and GPS data, our results indicate that Tibet experiences NNE-directed shortening at a rate of ∼5 mm/year between Qaidam Basin and Hexi Corridor. In the plateau interior, this shortening is accommodated by several range-bounding thrust faults and closely coupled with the eastward decrease in the slip rate of the Altyn Tagh fault.

The elevation of mountain belts increases at the subduction-to-collision transition in response to crustal thickening and processes like slab breakoff, but the main parameters controlling how much mountain height increases remain poorly understood. Based on analytical and finite-element force-balance models, we show that the increase in mountain height depends mainly on the magnitude of the shear force along the plate boundary fault (megathrust) and the reduction of submarine margin relief. During oceanic subduction, the megathrust shear force is balanced by the gravitational effect of the margin relief and the deviatoric stresses in the upper plate are low. When the submarine margin relief is reduced during the closure of the ocean basin, the effect of the gravitational force decreases and the upper plate experiences enhanced deviatoric compression, which allows the mountain height to increase until the deviatoric stresses beneath the high mountains are low again. If the increase in mountain height cannot keep pace with the submarine relief reduction, the compression of the upper plate increases by a few tens of MPa, which promotes tectonic shortening and mountain building. Our findings indicate that mountain height can increase by hundreds of meters to a few kilometers during continental collision, depending primarily on the trench depth during the subduction stage and possible syncollisional changes of the megathrust shear force.

The shear force along convergent plate boundary faults (megathrusts) determines the height of mountain ranges that can be mechanically sustained. Whether the true height of mountain ranges corresponds to this tectonically supported elevation is, however, debated. In particular, climate-dependent erosional processes are often assumed to exert a major control on mountain height, although this assumption has remained difficult to validate. To address this issue, we first constrained the shear force along active megathrusts from their rheological properties and then determined the tectonically supported elevation using a force balance model. This analysis revealed that the height of mountain ranges around the globe matches the tectonically supported elevation, irrespective of climatic conditions and the rate of erosion. This finding indicates that the height of mountain ranges is effectively limited by the megathrust shear force and implies that global differences in mountain height are at first-order tectonically controlled. Temporal variations in mountain height should therefore reflect long-term changes in the overall force balance rather than changes in climate and erosion.

Subseismic-scale geological information from reservoir analogs, when integrated with reservoir seismic data, substantially improves reservoir modelling. Wüstefeld et al (2018) developed a new workflow for 1) automated detection of subseismic-scale fracture surfaces exposed in reservoir analogs using terrestrial light detection and ranging (t-LIDAR), and 2) integration of the analog-fracture data in the standard industrial reservoir modelling routines (e.g., in Petrel software). In this workflow, the fracture surfaces detected along horizontal scan lines are used to derive one dimensional fracture density (P₁₀) that is further used as an input for discrete fracture network modelling for the reservoir. Apparent P₁₀ values along scanlines need to be corrected to get actual fracture densities (Terzaghi 1965).

We developed a script in MATLAB that uses the fracture surfaces data (detected through standard workflows in 3D point cloud data) to obtain Terzaghi-corrected P₁₀ values for each fracture orientation. Based on the user-defined condition for subparallelness (e.g., angle between fractures < A°), the script uses normal vectors of the detected fracture surfaces to classify them into clusters of subparallel fractures. It then obtains the mean orientations of different subparallel-fractures-clusters. Finally, the normal vector corresponding to the mean orientation of each cluster and spatial positions of the detected fracture surfaces are used to calculate perpendicular distances between the subparallel fractures (i.e., Terzaghi-corrected P₁₀ values). The corrected P10 values may then be used for further reservoir modelling approaches or distances between neighboring subparallel fractures can be used to assess clustering based on the normalized correlation count approach.

The Copper Age fortification of Los Millares is located 15 km north of Almería in Andalusia. At least between 3,541 BC (+/- 92 years) and 2,591 BC (+/- 22 years) there existed a water conduit, the so-called "aqueduct of Los Millares", with which water was conveyed to the settlement from a spring located about 1.25 km outside. U and Sr isotope analyses of groundwater samples in the catchment area as well as of the calcareous sinter deposits of the conduit provided evidence that a mixture of thermal water and near-surface groundwater had flowed in.

An interpretation of the climate on the basis of the ¹³C/¹²C and ¹⁸O/¹⁶O ratios of the sinters is therefore not straightforward. However, climatic information can be obtained. The calcareous sinter from the area of the spring, which was formed at the end of the Copper Age or at the beginning of the Bronze Age, during the so-called 4.2 ka cal BP event, showed a percentage increase of the thermal water content of the spring water, which can be explained by a less groundwater recharge of the near-surface water during the long-lasting drought.

By means of Sr isotope investigations of all aqueduct sinters, precisely dated paleoclimate data of the early and middle Copper Age can be obtained. So far, these have only been carried out on four sinter samples. For further investigations of climatic fluctuations based on Sr isotope ratios, 56 sinter samples from the aqueduct and the spring are available. A corresponding study is in preparation.

Speleothems provide a great opportunity for paleoclimate reconstruction because they occur almost worldwide and can be dated very precisely using the U-series disequilibrium method. The most commonly used climate proxies are stable isotope values (δ¹⁸O and δ¹³C) and trace elements. However, these are influenced by a variety of surface and in-cave processes, which results in a non-trivial interpretation of the speleothem proxy signals.

The last glacial period and in particular the Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 3 is, compared to the recent warm phase, the Holocene, characterised by larger climate oscillations. These are detectable in δ¹⁸O records from Greenland ice cores and also climate archives in Europe, such as pollen or tree ring records. Unfortunately, little direct proxy evidence is available from central Europe, and the climatic and environmental conditions during MIS 3 remain largely enigmatic. Speleothem records from central Europe during MIS 3 are limited due to cold climate conditions and mainly restricted to the warmer southern or alpine regions.

Here we present the first results of two flowstones from Bleßberg Cave in Germany. Preliminary ²³⁰Th/U-ages make these flowstones the most northern continental growth of speleothems during MIS 3 in central Europe. Thus, these samples provide the unique opportunity to reconstruct climate variability during parts of the last glacial period. With the combination of several different proxies, such as stable isotopes, trace elements and the results from cave monitoring, we will be able to obtain detailed insights into environmental conditions in central Europe during MIS 3 and the Late Glacial.

The carbon isotopic signature acquired from soil/epikarst processes may be a primary environmental signal of interest to interpret from speleothem d13C. However, this signal can be modified by prior calcite precipitation effects. To date, despite laboratory demonstration of PCP effects and increasingly sophisticated models fo the governing processes, there has been limited effort to deconvolve the dual PCP and soil/epikarst effects on measured speleothem carbon isotope time series.

In this contribution we evaluate the feasibility, advantages, and disadvantages of using trace element ratios and the d44Ca calcium isotopic ratio to estimate PCP and isolate its contribution to the measured speleothem d13C. We assess the challenges in the PCP indicators, such as incongruent dissolution, detrital influence on trace elements, and temperature or saturation effects on partitioning. We use the CaveCalc model of multi-step degassing with equilibrium fractionation to estimate the minimum contribution of PCP on the measured d13C. We compare the resulting estimated initial (without PCP) d13C calculated for the speleothem with cave monitoring data of d13C of undegassed DIC in the modern system. We contrast the potential for estimates of absolute initial d13C with the potential to estimate the temporal trends in initial d13C.

Oceanic uptake of anthropogenic CO₂ emissions induced global seawater pH decrease by 0.1 since the Industrial Revolution by altering ocean chemistry with the reduction of carbonate ion concentrations and the saturation states of aragonite. Massive tropical corals are ideal palaeoceanographic archives providing high-resolution records of the most recent few hundred years and offer a valuable extension to instrumental measurements. The South Pacific Convergence Zone (SPCZ), the largest persistent precipitation band in the Southern Hemisphere with an associated salinity front modulated by large-scale ocean-atmospheric interactions (El Niño/Southern Oscillation, Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation) may influence regional seawater CO₂ absorption and pH variability. Here we present coral-based paleoclimatic reconstructions from two Porites sp. corals of the Southwest Pacific region from Tonga and Rotuma. The corals are analyzed using a multi-proxy approach (δ¹⁸O, Sr/Ca, Li/Mg, U/Ca, Sr-U) to assess optimal sea surface temperature reconstruction. Preliminary δ¹⁸O results from both corals suggest similar freshening and/or warming of the surface water for the last 30 years of the 20^th century (Tonga: -0.0038‰ δ¹⁸O per year; Rotuma: -0.0033‰ δ¹⁸O per year). Coral B/Ca and δ¹¹B results for the reconstruction of carbonate chemistry changes and to establish the longer-term variability of seawater pH were completed. Tonga Porites sp. δ¹¹B signature indicate a significant decreasing trend since 1779, with a pronounced depletion in δ¹¹B since the 1950s of -0.0626 per year. Ultimately, this study will explore the regional-scale oceanic response to increasing pCO₂ and temperature, as well as the influence of interannual and decadal-interdecadal climatic fluctuations.

This contribution outlines the components of the geodata management at the Site Selection Department of the BGE, responsible for the implementation of the German site selection procedure. Its first phase is based on existing data from federal and state authorities.

The BGE has implemented a comprehensive geodata management process. While incoming data and the related correspondence are stored in searchable archives, they are prepared in well-defined transfer workflows with implemented checks before usage. The data transfer from the geodata management department to the respective scientific departments includes checks for correct locations, coordinate systems, plausibility and completeness. Only standardized and officially recognized formats are used in the further analyses together with specialized software tools for GIS data, borehole data as well as geological models. The current data pool comprises 350 data deliveries from 41 institutions with approximately 1 Million data files.

A significant portion of the geological data are received in analog form from the federal geological and mining authorities. Since 2 years, the BGE puts significant efforts into digitizing these data in tight cooperation with qualified geo-consultant partners.

In accordance with the „Geologiedatengesetz“ (national law for usage of geological data), data relevant to the site selection procedure will be made publically available in order to fulfill obligations for public participation and the involvement of stakeholders and decision makers. The BGE strives to make data publically available as soon as the legal requirements are met and to continuously improve accessibility and user friendliness of its web-based data portal.

Geosciences face a dramatic increase of high quality data as well as of powerful artificial intelligence approaches. These new techniques, however, have mostly been limited to applications to pre-existing research questions and approaches, e.g. for parameterizing groundwater models. In hydrogeology, these paradigms are closely related to the previous approach of studying individual processes on small spatial and temporal scales and subsequent up-scaling, e.g., via conceptual or numerical models. However, that approach suffers from heterogeneities, interactions, and feedbacks between different processes which are inherent of natural systems, resulting in substantial uncertainties. Overcoming these scale issues is a major challenge both for science and for water resources management.

Modern artificial intelligence techniques, combined with dynamic system theory paradigms, pave the way to a different approach. They allow to extract meaningful information from extensive data sets directly at the scale of interest, e.g., for large regions. Thus constraints can be exploited that are not visible at small scales. An example will be presented, where the influence of heterogeneous land use on evapotranspiration, groundwater recharge and groundwater dynamics at the scale of 20,000 km² was studied. It illustrates how science and water resources management can benefit a lot from exploring the range of now possible new scientific questions rather than from simple applications of artificial intelligence approaches in otherwise conventional studies.

Landslide Susceptibility Assessment Tools - Project Manager Suite (LSAT PMS), an open-source, user-friendly program written in Python developed and released at the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR). Although initially developed to conduct landslide susceptibility analyses, LSAT PMS is applicable for all types of spatial analyses related to supervised binary classification. The first LSAT PMS release supports analysis workflows based on the weight of evidence, logistic regression, artificial neural network, and analytical hierarchy process. Solution tailored toolbox and the implemented data management environment allow efficient import, preprocessing, analysis and postprocessing of the data. The graphical user interface facilitates the intuitive exploratory work with the data and the models. Developing LSAT PMS, we focus on the practical assessment of uncertainties and model evaluation to better characterise the capabilities and limitations of implemented methods. Therefore, LSAT PMS offers different subsampling techniques and an evaluation tool to evaluate and compare models generated by different methods. Introducing LSAT PMS, we hope to provide easy access to state-of-the-art methods for the non-programming community supporting scientific principles of openness, knowledge integrity, and replicability. The standardised project framework of LSAT PMS allows an easy sharing of the data and model results among peers. With the utilisation of standard data formats, analysis results are transferable among all GIS for further processing and advanced visualisation. The software, corresponding comprehensive documentation, and a test dataset are ready for download on BGR’s home page and GitHub. LSAT PMS is subject to further development.

As open source data becomes more ubiquitous, the involvement of citizen scientists has increased. The collection of large quantities of relevant data and respective labels through crowdsourcing on online platforms has yielded many exciting opportunities for machine learning applications. In geomorphology, multitemporal imagery, much of which is captured through crowdsourcing, is especially useful for training deep learning models for change detection in landscapes. This is relevant in terms of natural hazards that occur, including endogenous types like volcanoes and neotectonics, exogenous ones such as floods, karst collapses, sedimentation, erosion, tsunamis, and avalanches, as well as climate change or land use-induced hazards like permafrost and desertification. However, a challenge when harnessing crowdsourced imagery is the disorganized and “unclean” fashion in which it often presents itself. Cleaning data prior to training neural network-based computer vision models is key to success in any geomorphology change detection research. We discuss approaches such as manual techniques, image restoration and denoising, and image duplication reduction. The goal is to assimilate a diverse range of data collected from many sources to successfully train machine learning algorithms. In a broader sense, this research has the potential to save lives by detecting possibly destructive and dangerous geomorphological change, and to conserve environments that have been affected severely.

The electron spin resonance (ESR) spectra of iron ores from Kryvyi Rih deposit have been measured at two different temperatures: 295 K and 150 K. Two samples of ores were chosen for investigations: hematite ore of the Inguletsky combine of oxidized ores (sample 1) and hematite ore of the Novokryvorizky combine of oxidized ores (sample 2). The broad absorption lines with resonance field 1.546 kOe (sample1) and 1.453 kOe (sample 2) were observed at 295 K with values of the g-factor equal to 4.417 and 4.668 respectively. The amplitude of this line depends on the temperature. The ESR-signal amplitude increases with a reduction in temperature from 295 K to 150 K: for sample 1 by 21.6% and for sample 2 by 19.4%. The shift of the absorption line from 1.546 kOe to 1.456 kOe was observed with a reduction in temperature for sample 1 and from 1.453 kOe to 1.288 kOe was observed with a reduction in temperature for sample 2. The increase of the g-factor was observed with a reduction in temperature to 4.578 for sample 1 and to 5.390 for sample 2.

Large impact structures on Earth like the Chicxulub in Mexico are characterized by magnetic highs but the magneto-mineralogical origin is still poorly constrained and impact-generated melt versus hydrothermal activity models are discussed. The IODP-ICDP expedition 364 drilled into the peak ring of the Chicxulub impact crater, which is characterized by a well-developed hydrothermal system. This system was active for up to 2 Ma, reaching temperatures of 350-450°C. The main goal of our study is the investigation and characterization of heat treatment on shocked magnetite, the most important magnetic mineral in the shocked granitoid basement, and impact lithologies from drill core M0077A.

In this study, we used a combination of microscopic, rock-magnetic, and paleomagnetic methods to investigate the potential post-shock temperature effects in magnetite. Our preliminary results suggest the presence of three types of magnetite. The first type found in the crystalline basement shows large fractured grains of pure magnetite, with scattered paleomagnetic directions. The second type consists of newly formed Al- and Mg- rich spinel, appearing in skeletal crystals at the uppermost impact melt layer, with stable 29r chron directions. A third type of magnetite is found throughout all lithologies in assemblage with sulphides, both interpreted of hydrothermal origin. We observe a general irreversibility in the temperature-dependent magnetic susceptibility (k-T curves) of the basement magnetite, and reversible k-T curves at close proximity with melt layers. We interpret this to indicate the hydrothermal system to not have reached annealing temperatures, in contrast with the slow-cooling, high-temperature deeper melt layers.

Analysis of magnetic mineralogy alteration parameters has been used to understand mineralogy transformation at sample heating. While many studies used the reversibility of low-field magnetic susceptibility vs. temperature κ(T) curves in a qualitative sense to select material for paleomagnetic studies, few parameters have been developed to assess a quantitative description. This work aims to correlate the magnetic mineral properties deduced by susceptibility experiments of archaeological ceramics (burnt clay) during the heating steps of the Thellier-Thellier intensity method. Eight ceramics from a Mexican archaeological site were examined in cyclical experiments of κ(T) curves and susceptibility vs. frequency-dependence, respectively. We found that no degree in the reversibility of κ(T)-curves determine the successful samples for the archaeointensity estimation in advance, neither in single nor incremental temperature cycles. However, a complete analysis including more than seven cycles with an estimation of magnetic grain properties constrains the most useful samples for the archaeointensity experiment. We propose a new parameter (modIP_T) to evaluate the apparent reversibility for cyclical κ(T)-curves. We found a significant correlation of this parameter with archaeointensity statistical values that infer remanence alteration or directional deviation produced by mineral transformations after heating steps. We realized that particular burnt clay material as archaeological ceramic samples are suitable to register a reliable geomagnetic intensity and consequently an accurate archaeological dating, even though similar selection filters used in preceding works could have underestimated these materials.

Recent studies at Imperial College London have demonstrated that variations in magnetic mineralogy can be used to help track and quantify hydrocarbon migration. This work has built on past studies that identified strong magnetic anomalies associated with hydrocarbon accumulations, with several mechanisms suggested for their origin including: the influx of magnetic-mineral forming molecules creating new magnetic minerals; the formation of a reducing environment forcing chemical re-magnetisation of in situ minerals; and iron-forming bacteria biodegrading hydrocarbon organic matter. This study uses the connection between hydrocarbons and magnetic minerals to assist large-scale basin and petroleum systems modelling to answer a question that has existed since the 1970s – how did Beatrice Field in the Inner Moray Firth get charged?

The Raichur Schist Belt (RSB) is a NW-SE trending late-Archaean greenstone belt that forms part of the supracrustal units lying over an older gneissic basement. Granites (ca 2.5 Ga) occur in the vicinity of the RSB. The metavolcanics and granites are both massive and lack a field foliation and/or lineation. To work out the time-relationship between emplacement, fabric development and regional deformation of the granite vis-à-vis metavolcanic rocks and regional deformation, we performed Anisotropy of Magnetic Susceptibility (AMS) studies. Mean magnetic susceptibility (Km) of the metavolcanics varies between 843 µSI and 57800 µSI units, while in the granite it is between 6.88 µSI and 45000 µSI units. Microstructural studies reveal that the rocks are deformed and AMS is mostly controlled by paramagnetic phases. Temperature-dependent magnetic susceptibility studies carried out so far establish that samples with Km>1260 µSI contain multidomain magnetite. In the metavolcanics, mean orientation of magnetic foliation is NNW-SSE; this is similar to D1/D2 regional fabric of Dharwar Craton. The magnetic lineation is doubly plunging (direction varying from NNW to SSE). This is a manifestation of D3 superposed on D1/D2 fabric in the metavolcanics of RSB inferred from magnetic fabric, the mesoscopic field evidence for which is lacking. Similar superposed deformation is also implied from the AMS data of granites. The region is replete with quartz veins and their orientation analysis with respect to the magnetic fabric is expected to provide further details about the kinematics of the rocks.

Previously, thermodynamic modelling has been used to predict the magnetic phases favoured under varying geochemical conditions at hydrocarbon seepage zones. Although greigite (Fe₃S₄) has been identified by magnetic experiments in the North Sea and Wytch Farm oilfields, it was not included in previous thermodynamic models. Multiple studies have outlined the conditions required for greigite preservation in nature: sulphur supply needs to be enough to form greigite but limited as to not proceed to form pyrite; total organic carbon content needs to be low as it can produce sulphides; there needs to be a high availability of reactive iron. This study uses thermodynamic modelling to help constrain the following: What is the optimum level of sulphur? How much available iron is required? At what temperatures is greigite stable? Answering these questions is the first step in determining how greigite can exist in hydrocarbon environments.

Goundwater level data are a crucial element of water resources assessments. Corresponding measurements are often carried out with electric water level tapes, which are – despite their simple concept – relatively expensive. Here, I present a low-cost alternative, consisting of an ordinary measuring tape and an off-the-shelf “LED bait” (actually used for fishing). The latter is simply attached to the tape with a binder clip and starts flashing upon water contact. At reasonable depth-to-water conditions (<30 m), this light signal can be seen from the wellhead.

While the basic concept of a light-emitting, self-contained probe had already been harnessed in the 1930s by the company Spohr (Frankfurt, Germany), its use has been greatly facilitated by the emergence of LED baits that are available for a few Euros. Repurposing a consumer product, designed for an entirely different purpose, has hence enabled a fit-for-purpose device that can be built by anyone at a fraction of the costs of a traditional electric water level tape.

This water level meter “hack” provides a DIY tool for researchers and practitioners on a tight budget and a compact backup for others. Moreover, school or citizen science projects could benefit from this easy-to-build and low-cost alternative.

Further details can be found in a related publication (Michelsen, 2021).

References

Michelsen, N., 2021. A compact and low-cost do-it-yourself water level meter. Hydrological Processes, 35(5), e14205, DOI: 10.1002/hyp.14205

Within the framework of a study focusing on teacher training in geography at the University of Potsdam, the range of perspectives on the topics of physical geography was investigated. The starting point is that physical geography and human geography represent the main components of school geography teaching . This idea is motivated by the model of geography by Weichert (2003).

Initially, physical and human geography content seemed to be present in the curriculum in roughly equal proportions. However, a closer look reveals that human geography has a greater prominence. Physical geography is largely "shunted off" to elective modules and thus subliminally portrayed as less important to students.

The study presented here focuses on students' subjective views of physical geography. The results of the guided, semi-narrative interview study show that the majority of the students interviewed have a positive view of physical geography. However, students with neutral and negative views are also found. These negative views seem to result predominantly from the structure of the course. There seems to be an urgent need for action here, if physical geographic working methods, concepts and knowledge are to be taught as key competencies in school lessons as well.

The Museum Mineralogia München represents the museum window of the Mineralogical State Collection Munich (SNSB). It shows constantly reprocessed geoscientific topics through diverse special and permanent exhibitions.

In addition, there are numerous exhibitions that are particularly well suited to natural science school content. Topics such as volcanism, symmetry, metamorphosis or the chemistry of pigments are worth mentioning here. It is important to us that the projects can be attended by children and young people and cover a wide range of scientific, artistic and creative areas. Thus, the topic of metamorphosis has appealed to students and teachers from the subjects of geology, biology, geography, music and art.

In addition to guided tours and projects lasting several hours, our museum also offers project weeks or its own museum work in P and W school seminars as part of the LeLa (Lernort Labor) or Muc-Labs (Münchner Schülerlabore) initiative in Germany.

The aim is always to make minerals, crystals, rocks and meteorites " touchable" and “tangible” and to explore them scientifically with the children using simple but also modern methods. The interest in nature should be awakened, because only what you know and appreciate you can protect and love.

The need of raw materials for our society and our everyday life steadily increased during the last decades. In particular, the technological development demands for a secure supply as well as increasingly more metals. Therefore, a secured supply of raw materials is crucial for the economy worldwide. The supply risks of metals due to limited availability from only few countries became a political debate during the last decade, .i.e. defining the term critical raw materials. One essential aspect of critical raw materials are mineralogical and geoscientific questions as minerals host the valuable metals that we need for our technology. Therefore, also a mineralogical museum should deal with education for children, teenagers and adults of mineral raw materials and there need for our everyday life. The important link is to demonstrate them what kind of metals are inside in a smartphone. Looking at a world map and explaining where the minerals in our smartphones come from and what are the mineralogical and geological reasons for the enrichment of certain minerals in specific areas worldwide can be explained during workshops. This also allows the link to political consideration by discussion how small scale mining of minerals is used to finance conflicts such as in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Additionally, regional raw materials are important to be included in this discussion. The aim is to increase the awareness of the large variety of metals installed in the technical development combined with environmental concerns.

In order to cope with the wide-ranging field of geoscientific and geotechnical research it is essential to invest in the education of the next generation’s scientists and engineers. Many German high-school graduates decide to pursue a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) degree. Unfortunately, the dropout rates in STEM education are high and students struggle with basic subjects like science and mathematics where they are lacking knowledge from school [1]. With the project “PepperMINT“, funded by RAG-Stiftung, we present a new approach to close gaps in school STEM education and prepare freshmen for a successful beginning of their studies. PepperMINT is developed as a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) hosted by TH Georg Agricola (THGA), offering digital courses in mathematics, physics, chemistry and engineering. Students will be introduced to the lectures and exercises of the THGA by the integration of interactive and applied examples. For example, the mathematics module of trigonometry can be taught by applying geotechnical-surveying technology or geomonitoring methods like earth-observation. The concept allows students to get to know the area of geoscience and geotechnical engineering before they decide in which area they want to pursue their academic career. With the conception of a MOOC, the e-learning platform can be used independently from the location and available time. The project PepperMINT has the potential to gain attention from pupils and students all over Germany, to attract the geoscientists and engineers of the next generation and will therefore improve the value chain of mining and the circular economy.

Das GEOWiki@Schule ist ein Teilbereich der frei zugänglichen Online-Lernplattform GEOWiki@LMU, das derzeit auf Initiative von Lehramtsstudent:innen entsteht. Ziel ist es Schüler:innen und Lehrer:innen für die faszinierende Welt der Geowissenschaften zu begeistern und sie mit den geowissenschaftlichen Methoden vertraut zu machen. Hierfür sollen geowissenschaftliche Themen und Konzepte so aufbereitet werden, dass sie für Laien und Kinder unterschiedlicher Altersklassen nachvollziehbar sind und problemlos im Schulunterricht eingesetzt werden können. Die Artikel sind dabei in mehreren Ebenen aufgebaut:

Im Schülerbereich werden die verschiedenen Themen mit anschaulichen Graphiken übersichtlich behandelt und in einer für Schüler:innen verständliche Sprache aufbereitet. Der Fokus liegt dabei u.a. auch darauf, nicht nur geowissenschaftliche Konzepte, wie z.B. Plattentektonik, zu erklären, sondern auch zu vermitteln, mit Hilfe welcher Daten und Methoden das jeweilige Konzept oder Modell entwickelt werden konnte. Hiermit werden (geo-)wissenschaftliche Arbeitsweisen und der Umgang damit vermittelt und transparent gemacht. Ein Schwerpunkt von GEOWiki@Schule ist die Frage: Woher weiß man das? Bei Interesse können Leser:innen ihr Hintergrund- und Methodenwissen durch die Interlinks mit anderen Artikeln im GEOWiki@LMU erweitern. Zudem werden Fachbegriffe im Wörterbuch des GExikOns erklärt und in den Artikeln verlinkt.

Im Lehrerbereich werden darüber hinaus Anregungen für praktische Lehreinheiten sowie mögliche Exkursionen für den Unterricht an externen Lernorten gegeben. Zudem werden pädagogische Angebote wissenschaftlicher Einrichtungen, die im Schulunterricht zum Einsatz kommen können, in einer „Link-Sammlung“ vorgestellt, sodass sie von interessierten Lehrer:innen schnell und einfach gefunden werden können.

After implementation of the Repository Site Selection Act (StandAG) in 2017, the Federal Company for Radioactive Waste Disposal mbH (BGE mbH), as the German waste-management organization, started the site-selection procedure for a nuclear repository for high-level radioactive waste in Germany. On the way towards the repository site with the best possible safety, the site-selection procedure is required to be a participatory, transparent, learning and self-questioning process based on scientific expertise. With an Interim Report published in 2020, first results were presented, outlining sub-areas with favorable geological conditions in preparation for defining the site regions for surface exploration.

The next phases of the site selection procedure will require detailed geoscientific research outcomes to improve the understanding of various geological processes. This information is a prerequisite to assess the properties of the geological barrier and to constrain future developments of the geological system, hosting the nuclear repository within the next 1 million years. Therefore, research funded by the BGE covers various geoscientific subjects, ranging from volcanism to glacial erosion and computational geosciences.

With this contribution, the BGE intends to highlight some of its scientific key projects within the current step in the site-selection program. Scientific collaborators are different players including the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR), German Universities and specialized companies with a wide range of expertise that will support the required learning, self-questioning and science-based site-selection procedure for a nuclear repository for high-level radioactive waste in Germany.

Europe’s Green Transition is a declared key political goal in the European Union. The technology needed to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 relies heavily on metals and minerals. Responsible sourcing and short travel distances of the required materials make a positive contribution to an environmental balance. In addition, raw materials make an important contribution to the well-being of a society. Hence, the United Nations sees raw materials as the key component for achieving all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The European Green Deal (COM(2019) 640 final) of the European Union and the Paris Agreement cannot be achieved without additional quantities and new technological applications of raw materials. Yet, many of the minerals and metals are rarely mined or processed in Europe and are therefore considered "Critical". At the same time, the demand for responsible procurement under ethically, socially and ecologically sound conditions is becoming more and more stringent and demands personal responsibility.

GeoERA Raw Materials is a first step to take our share of responsibility to ensure responsible sourcing from domestic sources. The four projects EUROLITHOS, FRAME, MINDeSEA, and MINTELL4EU share expertise, information focussing on European on- and off-shore resources. It is among the tasks of the GeoERA raw material projects to know and evaluate in a comparable way the raw materials present in the geology under our feet and to visualize these results in accessible, harmonised databases, maps and publications. Outlining favourable areas for new RM deposits holds great potential for future generations.

Europe is largely dependent on raw materials imports and has to supply its needs, especially of critical raw materials, from international sources. Nevertheless, Europe also has a long lasting mining history and some deposits have been mined continuously even for hundreds of years.

Within the GeoERA the project FRAME investigates traditional mining sites and their raw material potential. In addition to the main commodities of these historic deposits, the project focuses on strategic raw materials (SRM) such as e.g. high-tech metals extracted as by-products and critical raw materials of the EU actual list. These raw materials might be contained in the ore or in residues from the nowadays abandoned mining and beneficiation activities.

The project aims at improving knowledge regarding the potential of historic mine sites and contributes to improving pan-European geological information on historic mine sites. Case studies investigate specific deposits for their raw material potential. Different sources of data like national databases, literature, previous projects and expert information by the project partners were used to review and collect site-specific data on historic mine sites and their potential for SRM. Fieldwork and sampling added new data.

The project will feed site-specific data of ore deposits and mine wastes with CRM potential into the pan-European knowledge base on raw materials: the GeoERA Information Platform.

This project is part of FRAME, with is part of the GeoERA project (www.geoera.eu) co-funded through the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 731166.

Exploration was recently carried out on the sediment-hosted Dolostone Ore Formation (DOF) Cu-Co mineralization, in the Kunene Region of northwestern Namibia, in the pursuit of new sources of Co. Sharing several key similarities to the Central African Copperbelt, the DOF has potential of becoming Namibia’s first Co mine. Due to the mineralization being recently explored, aspects of the mineralizing system are yet unconstrained. In the scope of the project, several analytical methods are being deployed; LA-ICP-MS trace element analyses of sulfides being one of the main methods.

Trace elements analyses of sphalerite, chalcopyrite, pyrite and pyrrhotite of the six mineralization styles (disseminated, clustered, nodular, “sigma”, veins and “events”) reveal a multi-generational ore-forming history of the DOF. Elements such as Fe, Co, Ni, Ga, Se and Cd in sphalerite and Co, Ni, Se and Bi in chalcopyrite show discrete grouping of element concentrations between (1) dissemination, cluster, nodule and “event” styles and (2) “sigma” and vein styles. Trends in sulfide geochemistry and geothermometry of sphalerite (which formed above 310 ± 50 °C) indicate that metamorphism strongly influenced the DOF mineralization. Metamorphism in the Kunene Region is attributed to the Damara Orogeny.

Many questions remain, e.g. the role of pre-existing pyrites and the possibility of an early, diagenetic mineralization. Understanding when and why these Co-bearing sediment-hosted mineralizations formed is of key-importance for the exploration of new deposits and securing new Co-resources for our green-technology future.

Thoron contribution to the inhaled dose is often neglected due to its shorter half-life and lack of strong gamma emissions that hinder its measurement. However, numerous studies report a significant contribution of thoron and/or its progeny to the dose received by the population. In the present work, radon and thoron exhalation rate and emanation coefficient were measured simultaneously with the accumulation method with an AlphaGuard DF2000 monitor in granite samples collected in high background radiation areas located in Central Portugal. The samples were also analyzed by gamma-ray spectrometry using an Ortec NaI(Tl) detector to determine ²²⁶Ra and ²²⁴Ra assuming secular equilibrium in the respective decay series. The relationship between radon and thoron exhalation rate and emanation coefficient, and the activity concentrations of their parent isotopes, are investigated.

Radon exhalation and emanation are generally higher than thoron’s, however, thoron exhalation rate may exceed the radon exhalation rate in porphyritic granodiorites. Weak correlations are observed between radon and thoron, suggesting they must be estimated independently for the assessment of thoron’s contribution to the dose received by the population. Variations of the radon exhalation rate, radon and thoron emanation coefficient, and the activity concentration of radium (²²⁶Ra and ²²⁴Ra) are observed linked to the geologic time of emplacement of granitic intrusions during the Variscan orogeny.

Inspired by the new Radiation Protection Act (2013/59/EURATOM), which entered into force at the end of 2018, the city of Bad Nauheim in southern Hesse has been chosen for measurements of soil air radon and CO₂. In doing so, the focus is on the variability of concentrations in the area of tectonic features (normal faults), which are hosted in Devonian rocks, overlain by Tertiary and Quaternary unconsolidated sediments (Schäffer & Sass, 2016). Some of the faults, which are trending N-S and W- E respectively, are supposed to be active, enabling the migration of mineralized waters towards the surface.

Within a first measuring campaign, 231 soil air measurements were carried out, following transects that cross tectonic faults perpendicular. Results confirm advective radon anomalies with concentrations of up to 2000 kBq/m³, guided by a positive correlation between radon and CO_2. At the same time, this correlation is diminishing with increasing distance to the faults (Möll 2018).

Based on the outcomes a second measuring campaign is on the way, addressing the following questions:

1) Are measured radon and CO₂ concentrations reproducible?

2) How much radon is exhalating into buildings located near faults?

Works are focusing on two faults, which are located close to the so called “Sprudelhof” (fountain court), a bath house in the city center, and include both active (Saphymo AlphaGUARD) and passive (Exposimeter) soil air measurements as well as repeated indoor measurements (also active and passive) in the basement of the “Sprudelhof”.

The sealing potential of geological formations (“cap rocks”) plays an important role in long-term industry projects associated with mine water rebound, carbon sequestration and nuclear waste disposal. It is an important criterion in risk management and monitoring concepts. Clay content and mineralogy were used as screening parameters in order to estimate permeability in the Upper Cretaceous Emscher Formation. The Emscher Formation consists of monotonous grey to greenish alternating clay-, silt- and marlstones with a high amount of micrite. Distribution of clays was quantified on core and cuttings material using combined X-ray diffraction and Rietveld refinement. An important task was to evaluate content and changes in clay mineralogy with respect to expandable clays. The aim is to assess its self-sealing potential. Core sections and cuttings were retrieved from groundwater monitoring wells drilled in the northern part of the Ruhr District. The aim of these wells is to record hydraulic potential in the overburden section during mine water rebound in the Ruhr District. Classical lithological and sedimentological analyses of core section were conducted. Bulk geochemistry included total inorganic and organic carbon measurements. Elemental analyses on selected samples was determined using X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy. Clay mineral identification and quantification was performed on (a) bulk rock, (b) <2µm random powder and (c) <2µm oriented samples. For expandable clays, ethylene glycol and heating to 550°C was applied.

Bergbau im 21. Jahrhundert bedeutet auch Alt- und Nachbergbau, immer geknüpft an die Bewältigung post-montaner Herausforderungen und die Langzeit- und Zukunftsaufgaben. Hiermit einhergehend sind Fragestellungen zu den damit verbundenen Kosten und der Möglichkeit der Weiterentwicklung im Bereich der Standortintegrität und -überwachung. Zusätzlich ist die gesellschaftliche Akzeptanz (engl. „social license to operate“) von Bergbauprojekten immer ein Thema. Die Forderung der Öffentlichkeit nach mehr Informationen bei der Erkundung, der Erschließung, der Produktion und der Stilllegung eines Bergbaustandortes stellt den Betreiber vor neue, weitere Herausforderungen.

Hier kann ein modernes Geomonitoring, welches Daten aus einer Vielzahl von Messverfahren aus der Luft, an der Oberfläche und untertage, z. B. über Satelliten, Drohnen, Begehungen, in-situ-Sensoren, Bohrlochgeophysik, petrophysikalische und mikroskopische Gesteinscharakterisierungen und Modellrechnungen integriert, helfen. Das Geomonitoring schafft somit ein transparentes, raum- und zeitbezogenes Prozessverständnis und umfasst mikroskopische, makroskopische sowie regionalgeologische Maßstäbe. Zudem kann das Risikomanagement von Bergbauprojekten unterstützt werden.

Mining has required pumping in a wide area of the Ruhr region. In part, this leads to subsidence of more than 10 m. The matrix permeability of the rocks in the underground is rather low. Therefore, fracture fluid flows are assumed to contribute significantly to the groundwater flow. Our study area is the area between Dortmund and Hamm. It includes a number of major faults (in general, one set of faults is NE-SW oriented thrust faults, the other set of faults can be described as NW-SE mainly normal faults) that potentially subdivide the area into compartments with different hydraulic behavior. The dilation tendency is important for migration pathways. We present the dilation tendency based on the contemporary tectonic stress field. Furthermore, the slip tendency is presented for different water levels in comparison to the observed seismicity. The slip tendency shows how changes in effective stress (and thus changes in pore pressure and water level) modify the tendency of a fault to slip (see also other FLOODRisk contributions).
In addition, we use a generic numerical model within the compartment "Haus Aden Shaft 2" to simulate the change in reactivation potential of the bounding faults for water level changes due to activities in a nearby "generic" mine.

High quality metadata are a pre-requisite for enabling FAIR data products. In Earth and environmental research some metadata, such as the coordinates, need to be recorded directly in field. Other information, e.g. which kinds of samples were collected, may be saved after the campaign at the risk of being erroneous and time intensive.

In order to improve the metadata workflow at Hereon, we established an app for field metadata collection at the Helmholtz Coastal Data Center. The fields that need to be filled in a survey include the coordinates, date and time, the station name, the campaign and sample characteristics. Additional information, such as an image of a sample, can also be attached. The app, Survey123 developed by Esri, is easily customizable and is configured for each individual campaign. A GNSS receiver with up to 0.1m accuracy provides the location to the app.

Advantages of using the field app over previously used paper records are for example the automatic inclusion of GNSS data and a digital record of the metadata. This decreases the chance of manual transcription errors or data loss and allows for direct access of the metadata in the field, e.g. through an online map.

The metadata are transmitted via mobile transfer to our institution’s cloud storage, from where it is quality checked and stored in a database. An automatic registration of IGSNs for the samples is planned at this step. Once the samples are analyzed, the resulting data is connected to the corresponding metadata and published.

Geology does not follow national borders and for many areas of application, it is essential to know the characteristics of the subsurface on both sides of the border. In the area of the North Sea, however, consistent interpretation of the subsurface across borders are rare, as most studies carried out here by the Geological Survey Organizations (GSOs) in charge have remained confined to their national territories. As a consequence, the interpretations are often not aligned to each other, and in recent years, it has become more and more obvious by a variety of 3D-modeling projects that there exists in part considerable discrepancies e.g. in depth, distribution and thickness of certain stratigraphic intervals along the borders. Within the framework of the GeoERA research project ”3D Geomodeling for Europe”, the GSOs of the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark addressed these issues and integrated existing national (and regional) geomodels into a harmonized, consistent interpretation of the subsurface in their North Sea offshore border region. The results of the project presented here include: (a) A harmonized cross-border velocity model covering main parts of the Danish, German and Dutch North Sea. (b) A geometrically and stratigraphically consistent geological model of the Central Graben area across the Dutch-German-Danish border. (c) A consistent fault model of a segment of the Coffee Soil Fault. (d) Lithostratigraphic correlation schemes in the area of the Central Graben. The results achieved improve the spatial understanding of the subsurface structures of the project area and serve as a guide for future cross-border studies.

As part of the geothermal project GeneSys, the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources, drilled the Groß Buchholz Gt1 geothermal well. At a depth of approx. 1,100 - 1,330m several sandstone layers of the Lower Cretaceous (predominantly Bückeberg Fm/Wealden) are present. Additionally to the borehole data, two seismic surveys covering the surrounding area (BGR 01-2001, 01-2006) were generated. For potential geothermal usage of these sandstone layers, their regional distribution within the larger Hanover area is one of the main questions. During the Early Cretaceaous the Lower Saxony Basin was bordered by the Pompeckj Swelll to the north, by the Rhenish Massif and Hildesheim Peninsula to the south, the Flechtingen High to the east and the East Netherlands Triassic Platform to the west. These large areas isolated the Lower Saxony Basin mainly from the sea at that time. The study area is located northeast of Hanover at the former basin margin, which is dominated by siliciclastic units (Bückeberg Fm, Wealden). Although there is some literature on the origin of these units, a detailed depositional model explaining their genesis is lacking. Therefore, we analyzed two 2D seismic sections in terms of seismic facies. First results pointing to a prograding deltaic - fluviatil system. These findings give new insights into the deposition of the so-called Wealden in the area of Hanover as well as in a regional context.

It is currently proposed that life existed 3.5-3.8 Ga ago. However, the origin of the microorganisms is not yet explained. This presentation shows an anoxic path of formation of ferric minerals together with production of H₂, when ferrous rocks interact with water at 300°-350°C, 10-25 MPa, 700-600 kg/m³, and at very alkaline pH, 11-14. The released H₂ can interact with the dissolved CO₂ and lead to CO that is known to be the preferred simple molecule for prebiotic chemistry reactions. Fluid inclusions that form during the hydrolysis can thus contain H₂, CO, H₂O. When N₂ is present, this assemblage of molecules is known in the laboratory to lead to organic molecules of life. Therefore, from the rocks may form the molecules that are required for the emergence of life, process that I represented in 2016, by the concept of geobiotropy.

This conclusion arises from the analysis of the redox potential E of the electrochemical system Fe-high subcritical water, in the high pH range. The induced precise values of T, P, density, pH, can be applied to the anoxic geological world, such as Early Earth and Enceladus, the icy satellite of Saturn.

A Raman observation of a sample from the 3.4 Ga Buck Reef Chert, Barberton Greenstone Belt, South Africa, shows quartz, siderite, hematite and the peak of water inside a 1 μm fluid inclusion in quartz. Other lines are under study.

The theoretical predictions on anoxic ferrous iron oxidation will be tested with laboratory experiments that are currently under preparation.

Using ultra-high-resolution, 2D-thermomechanical modeling, we explore the evolution of the mantle of a terrestrial planet with a stagnant lid like Venus or the early Earth. Without plate tectonics, the mantle will heat over time from the decay of radiogenic isotopes. The convecting upper mantle will undergo partial melting and thicken a basaltic crust. When the crust reaches a critical thickness, the base of it transforms into eclogite. As eclogite is considerably denser than the underlying mantle it will ultimately delaminate. While ringwoodite in the peridotitic ambient mantle turns into perovskite and periclase at around 24 GPa and becomes about 10% denser, the similar phase reaction for garnet into perovskite in the basaltic crust occurs deeper, at around 27 GPa. The delaminated crust therefore accumulates in the 24-27 GPa range, where it has an intermediate density of the material above and below, and therefore suppresses convection across. Over time, this causes a significant temperature offset, as the upper mantle can continuously vent radiogenic heat, while the lower mantle cannot. Eventually, the crust-rich layer is pushed beyond 27 GPa and becomes denser than the underlying lower mantle. This triggers a run-away global mantle overturn. Superheated lower mantle streams upwards into the melting zone, increasing magmatic production by orders of magnitude for ≈50 Myr. After overturn, the mantle is highly heterogeneous with preserved domains of primitive mantle in a fooliated mélange of depleted mantle and basaltic crust.