23.06.2020
EN Die Mischung macht’s
Der Wald ist ein einzigartiger und wichtiger Lebensraum für Mensch und Tier. Knapp ein Drittel der Erdoberfläche ist von Wäldern bedeckt. Auch in Deutschland ist es rund ein Drittel der Landfläche: 11,4 Millionen Hektar. Doch es steht derzeit nicht gut um den Wald. Das sich verändernde Klima setzt ihm mächtig zu. Andreas Huth und Friedrich Bohn erforschen, wie Wälder am besten auf künftige Extreme
Further press releases from Helmholtz
10.06.2021
Climate protection, biodiversity, social justice
These challenges can only be overcome together, say Hans-Otto Pörtner (AWI) and Josef Settele (UFZ). They are co-authors of the first joint IPCC and IPBES workshop report.
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10.06.2021
Climate change, biodiversity loss and social justice – these challenges can only be overcome together
The fight against global warming and for sustainable development can only succeed if, from now on, humankind considers the issues of climate change, biodiversity loss and social justice together, and…
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08.06.2021
CO2-neutral on the North Sea
The Alfred Wegener Institute is setting new standards for sustainability in German maritime shipping. On 8 June 2021 the keel for the successor to the research cutter Uthörn will be laid at the…
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02.06.2021
Salps fertilise the Southern Ocean more effectively than krill
Experts at the Alfred Wegener Institute have, for the first time, experimentally measured the release of iron from the fecal pellets of krill and salps under natural conditions and tested its…
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27.05.2021
Antarctic hotspot: Fin whales favour the waters around Elephant Island
During the era of commercial whaling, fin whales were hunted so intensively that only a small percentage of the population in the Southern Hemisphere survived, and even today, marine biologists know…
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21.05.2021
Polarstern Sets Sail for the Arctic
On Whit Monday, 24 May 2021, the Polarstern will set sail for the Arctic. In Fram Strait, between Greenland and Svalbard, more than 50 participating scientists will resume the long-term observations…
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20.05.2021
Less Forest, More Species
Normally, mountain forests are among the most diverse habitats in alpine regions. Yet, as a team from the Alfred Wegener Institute discovered in the Tibetan Plateau, the higher, treeless areas are…
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13.05.2021
Carbon emissions from dams considerably underestimated so far
Until now, it had been assumed that dams act as net carbon stores. However, researchers at the UFZ, in cooperation with Spanish scientists, have now shown that dams release twice as much carbon as…
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11.05.2021
AWI Technical Centre: The Shell is Complete
Roughly two years after the groundbreaking ceremony on 18 April 2019, the shell for the AWI Technical Centre in the Klußmannstraße, Bremerhaven is now complete. Since the ongoing pandemic made a live…
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03.05.2021
Plant diversity in drylands is particularly endangered
In the world’s drylands, changes in rainfall have a much greater effect on plant diversity than in wetter regions. This was written by a team of scientists in Central Germany led by the UFZ.
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26.04.2021
Surprise in the deep sea
Sponges: They are considered to be one of the most primitive forms of animal life, because they have neither locomotion organs nor a nervous system. A team around deep-sea scientist Antje Boetius has…
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06.04.2021
Assessing the Impacts of Nodule Mining on the Deep-Sea Environment
Scientists of the JPI Oceans project “MiningImpact” are embarking on a 6-week expedition to the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone (CCZ) in the Pacific. Their goal is to carry out independent…
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31.03.2021
Jordan’s worsening water crisis a warning for the world
Prolonged and potentially destabilizing water shortages will become commonplace in Jordan by 2100, unless the nation implements comprehensive reform, new research by an international team of…
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19.03.2021
Droughts in Germany could become more extreme
In the future, droughts could be even more severe than those that struck parts of Germany in 2018. An analysis of climate data from the last millennium shows that several factors have to coincide to…
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17.03.2021
Polarstern expedition investigates massive calved iceberg
Roughly two weeks ago, a massive iceberg calved from the Antarctic Ice Sheet. As the only research vessel nearby, the Polarstern took the opportunity to enter the area between the iceberg and the…
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05.03.2021
UFZ Social Scientist Dr. Silke Beck in portrait
Silke Beck is concerned with the assessment of environmental protection measures at the science-policy-society interface: What consequences can measures have? How do ideas from science and…
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23.02.2021
‘Missing Ice Problem’ Finally Solved
During glacial periods, the sea level falls, because vast quantities of water are stored in the massive inland glaciers. To date, however, computer models have been unable to reconcile sea-level…
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18.02.2021
42,000-year-old sub-fossil trees allow more accurate analysis of the last reversal of the Earth's magnetic field
The last complete reversal of the Earth's magnetic field, the so-called Laschamps event, took place 42,000 years ago. Radiocarbon analyses of the remains of kauri trees from New Zealand now make it…
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17.02.2021
Alfred Wegener Institute Now Also Represented in Lower Saxony
As of 1 January 2021, Lower Saxony is part of the federal and state financing for the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). The inclusion of the Helmholtz…
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04.02.2021
The Marine Soundscape and Anthropogenic Noise
Due to construction work in the sea, shipping, and gas and oil extraction, the oceans are becoming increasingly louder. A comprehensive international study has now shown that this noise affects the…
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03.02.2021
The Arctic Ocean was covered by a shelf ice and filled with freshwater
The Arctic Ocean was covered by up to 900 m thick shelf ice and was filled entirely with freshwater at least twice in the last 150,000 years. This surprising finding, reported in the latest issue of…
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28.01.2021
Climate Research in the Southern Ocean
The Alfred Wegener Institute has risen to the challenge of undertaking an expedition to the Weddell Sea in the Antarctic under pandemic conditions. Consequently, the participants in this year’s first…
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14.01.2021
Wandering Icebergs
During glacial periods, icebergs from Antarctica drifted much further north than they do today. An international team led by Cardiff University and which included the AWI has now revealed how this…
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06.01.2021
The new face of the Antarctic
In the future, the Antarctic could become a greener place and be colonised by new species. At the same time, some species will likely disappear. 25 researchers recently presented these and many other…
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17.12.2020
Whale Song Reveals Behavioural Patterns of Antarctic Minke Whales and Humpback Whales in the Weddell Sea
Until recently, what we knew about the lives of baleen whales in the Southern Ocean was chiefly based on research conducted during the Antarctic summer. The reason: in the winter, there were…
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14.12.2020
Back to the Roots of Antarctic Research
This year, the Alfred Wegener Institute’s Neumayer Station III will be exclusively supplied by sea. The research vessel Polarstern will transport– as usual – materials and fuel to the Antarctic…
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07.12.2020
Central Europe: Dry Aprils pave the way for summer droughts
In the past 20 years, Central Europe has experienced six summer heat waves and droughts. Until now, however, it was unclear what factors led to these extreme events. Researchers from two Helmholtz…
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01.12.2020
Watching the Arctic Thaw in Fast-forward
The frozen permafrost in the Arctic is thawing on an alarming scale. By analysing an annual record of satellite images, researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute have now confirmed these findings:…
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13.11.2020
Fighting the Salmon Louse
It’s a nightmare for fish breeders, causes damage amounting to millions, and is also a growing problem for wild salmon: the salmon louse is high on the list of notorious fish parasites. In a new…
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26.10.2020
Irregular Appearances of Glacial and Interglacial Climate States
During the last 2.6 million years of Earth’s climate has alterd between glacial and interglacial states. As such, there have been times in which the transition between the two climate states appeared…
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