Natural gas mixtures trapped in mineral-hosted fluid inclusions provide valuable information about the origin, generation and migration of gases in the geological record. A new on-line method for simultaneous measurements of stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios of fluid inclusion gases was developed at the GFZ.

PALAVAS will track weathering and erosion rates of basalt rocks through time based on isotope-geochemical and cosmogenic nuclide-analyses of soils, rivers, and detrital sedimentary archives, and thus will deliver updated view of how weathering and erosion evolve on volcanic tropical islands, and how this evolution impacts global CO₂ consumption.

The aim of the Devendra project is to develop the meteoric ¹⁰Be/⁹Be proxy to quantify the weathering of basalt and carbonate rocks and to decipher their impact on the Earth's vegetation and climate system:

The project investigates whether the silicate weathering feedback was weakened during the Middle Eocene Climate Optimum (MECO) 40 million years ago by analyzing silicon and lithium isotope records from microfossils to understand the dynamics of silicate weathering and carbon cycling.

Using numerical modelling, we simulate the ice cover during the last glacial cycle and the resulting isostatic adjustment of the Alpine lithosphere.

Erosion rates influence the residence time of soil and regolith at the Earth surface, and thus how elements are released from rock and cycled through ecosystems. We develop and apply geochemical tools to quantify the dependence of weathering and element cycling at well-characterised sites along a gradient of erosion rates.

Meteoric ¹⁰Be, produced in the atmosphere, can be used to quantify denudation rates (the sum of weathering and erosion) when normalized with the stable trace element ⁹Be. We measure this ¹⁰Be/⁹Be ratio in river sediments, soils, but also in water or even plants.