Volkswagen Foundation funds: Soil and Landscape Dynamics – Quantifying Processes in Earth’s Critical Zone

How do weathering, sediment fluxes, and soil formation processes shape the Earth’s surface? And how can these processes be quantified across different timescales? These are the central questions of the new project Soil and Landscape Dynamics – Quantifying Processes in Earth’s Critical Zone, which started in May 2025 at the University of Cologne.

Funding
 The project is supported by the Volkswagen Foundation under the funding initiative “Earth System Sciences” to further establish its guiding concept in both research and teaching. The funding amounts to ~1.5 million EUR over six years and enables the establishment of a new tenure-track junior professorship. The designated Junior Professor for Soil and Landscape Dynamics is Dr. Svenja Riedesel. The project is linked to the strategic development of Earth System Sciences at the Department of Geosciences at the University of Cologne. Professor Dr. Tony Reimann from the Geomorphology & Geochronology Research Group is leading this strategic initiative, which is also funded by the VolkswagenFoundation.

Critical Zone at the Core

Critical Zone Research investigates landscape evolution from groundwater to treetops, integrating the various spheres of the Earth. The so-called Critical Zone refers to the vital interface where the lithosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and anthroposphere interact. Processes within this “Critical Zone” influence weathering, as well as key sediment and soil processes, which in turn affect the global carbon cycle and, consequently, the climate system.

Research Strategy
 Understanding these complex interactions and processes across multiple timescales requires a holistic and integrated research approach that combines fieldwork, laboratory experiments, and computational modelling.

Methodologically, the project focuses on three main research objectives:

1. Development of a novel, non-destructive, luminescence-based weathering proxy
2. Application of the new proxy and quantification of fallout nuclide concentrations to investigate weathering and soil erosion processes
3. Development of a model to quantify soil and surface dynamics

In short, the project aims to develop a non-destructive, luminescence-based weathering proxy, combines it with fallout nuclide measurements to quantify weathering and soil dynamics, and integrate these data into a model that tracks soil and landscape evolution over various timescales and allows predictions of future changes.

New Research Group: Critical Zone Research
  As part of the project, Dr. Svenja Riedesel has established the new Critical Zone Research group at the Institute of Geography. This forms a central component for advancing Critical Zone research and the Earth System Sciences at the University of Cologne, closely linking to the existing strengths in geomorphology and geochronology, while also reinforcing the Department of Geosciences’ position within the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences as one of Germany’s leading geoscientific institutions.