The "Sustainability & Biodiversity" Profile Area stands for excellent research and teaching in the context of planetary health and dynamics, and comprises research in the fields of sustainability, biodiversity, earth system and the environment. The aim of the Profile Area’s council is to advise and support Goethe University in the strategic design of the Profile Area and to serve as a platform for inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration. One of the main goals is to connect the Profile Area’s scientists, from well-established researchers to junior scientists, to jointly develop coordinated research programs, to identify new topics and excellent scientists for strategic recruitments, as well as to promote young researchers.
Henner Hollert (Evolutionary Ecology and Environmental Toxicology)
|Spokesperson
“For me, the 'Sustainability & Biodiversity' Profile Area constitutes a fantastic network for exchanging views on research and teaching across faculty boundaries and to develop the interdisciplinary collaboration in the field of planetary health and dynamics into one of real transdisciplinary excellence. What I find unique is the Profile Area's broad expertise in understanding the interactions between chemical stress and biodiversity decline and climate change, as well as the ability to contribute to societal transformation by means of an interdisciplinary approach.”
Nele Meyer (Soil Geography and Ecosystem Research)
|Spokesperson
“We are currently facing enormous problems: Climate change, pollution and the loss of biodiversity are among the major challenges of our time. Due to the complex interactions in the earth system, interdisciplinary approaches are essential for researching such problems. The “Sustainability & Biodiversity" profile area offers an excellent platform for networking and working together on sustainable solutions.”
Key Research Areas
The "Sustainability & Biodiversity" Profile Area bundles comprehensive research activities in the established focus areas of Earth System Research, Climate and Weather Research, as well as Biodiversity and Nature Conservation.
The research questions in the field of "Sustainability & Biodiversity" largely concern cross-cutting issues that require an interdisciplinary approach. That is why several departments, especially in the biological, molecular and life sciences (Faculties 14 and 15) as well as the geosciences (Faculty 11), are represented in this Profile Area and cooperate closely in research and teaching. Other subjects, such as economics and sociology, are also closely involved when it comes to questions on measures to avoid the dangerous consequences of climate change, for example. Extensive synergies are generated through interdisciplinary cooperation and by linking and bundling Goethe University's existing expertise in the individual fields, creating a profile with characteristic unique selling points.
Research on climate, weather and atmosphere
The foci of climate, weather, and atmospheric research include regional climate modeling, aerosol particle and cloud formation, cloud radiative properties and dynamics, tropopause region processes, and gravity wave theory. Earth system research foci include, for example, the global freshwater cycle or the geoscientific study of past interglacial periods as natural analogs of the expected “high-in-CO2” climate future.
Biodiversity and Nature Conservation
This focus brings numerous topics that are currently in the public eye into a common ecological, economic, and social context. Topics include but are not limited to species conservation, biodiversity decline, chemical pollution, sustainability, renewable energies, physical and mental health, globalization, digitalization, genetic engineering, industrial and consumer society, the global trade and financial system, nutrition, demographic changes, and social inequality.
Earth System Science
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Common to all focus areas is the research questions’ extraordinary social relevance. Due to rapid global change, the topics will remain of utmost importance in the medium and long-term future, far beyond the respective expert circles. Important findings, action perspectives and innovative solutions for society are derived directly from the research results.