About us
GEOSOIL focuses on growing our understanding of the complex dynamics that rule combined soil and landscape development. Our suite of methods and expertises includes field observations, mapping, and measurements of soils and geomorphic features and fluxes, sampling for and analysis of geochronological work, but most strongly the development, use and distribution of soil- and landscape evolution models. We develop and maintain the soil-landscape evolution model LORICA together with colleagues at the University of Cologne in Germany. This model is the first to simulate both lateral, geomorphic landscape forming processes and vertical, pedogenic soil forming processes in an overarching framework. As a result, we are able to simulate how changes in soil properties in one location, impact geomorphic processes in another location, and vice versa. Our aim is to make such models accurate, easy to use, and useful for the academic community, and we are very open to requests for assistance in setting up and executing modelling-related studies.
Our main interest is in the world’s mountainous landscapes, with field and/or simulation experience in the European Alps, the Apennines, the Drakensberg, the Spanish Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains, among others. We are fascinated specifically by such landscapes because the interaction between soil formation and mass movements is so strong, and because our use of such landscape is still strongly linked to the stability and sustainability of the natural resources. At the same time, we are interested in all other landscapes where soils and landscape formation interact, such as the hetrolithic landscapes in the U.S. Great Plains.
Field observation and measurement are a close secondary interest next to modelling. Good modelling requires field-based insights about driving factors and processes, and it also requires accurate measurements of process rates. Over longer timescales, we interpret geochronological results (luminescence dating, cosmogenic isotopes and radiocarbon) to derive process rates, whereas over shorter timescales we observe process rates and fluxes ourselves (e.g. through photogrammetry, chronosequences, gravel counts, and measuring carbon fluxes). We aim to develop improved soil-scientific protocols for the measurement and characterisation of very stony soils.
People live in the landscapes that we study. This informs our interest in the direct and indirect impacts of the dynamics that we study on our societies. Specific areas of interest in this regard are the impact of landscape form and of natural hazards on the mountaineering community. To this end, we enjoy working together with and learning from mountaineering communities.