Earth and Environment

As part of an international deep-sea expedition, a team of researchers under the co-leadership of Innsbruck geologist Michael Strasser took the deepest samples ever obtained from the seafloor at a depth of more than 8000 meters in the Japan Trench in 2021. Large amounts of dissolved carbon and enormous methane reservoirs were discovered in the seafloor, the formation of which is favored by the strong earthquake activity there. The impact of processes in deep-sea trenches on the global carbon cycle has hardly been explored so far.

During a research cruise, an international research team led by marine biologist Monika Bright of the University of Vienna discovered a new ecosystem in the deep sea. This is located beneath the surface of hydrothermal vents of a well-studied underwater volcano on the East Pacific Ridge off Central America. Monika Bright led the groundbreaking 30-day expedition aboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute research vessel Falkor (too) and was accompanied by an international team of scientists from the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Costa Rica and Slovenia.

By Falko Schoklitsch - Based on the vanillin made usable for electricity storage in 2020, an AI-optimised prototype of an environmentally friendly electricity storage system is now being developed in an international project.

By Philipp Jarke und Falko Schoklitsch How can we deal with droughts and floods? To what extent are we ourselves to blame? An interview with Daniela Fuchs-Hanusch from the Institute of Urban Water Management and Landscape Water Engineering at TU Graz.