- What controls the development of sedimentary basins?
- How can we extract information about Earth’s history from the sedimentary record?
- How does biodiversity relate to the environment?
- What can we learn from climate changes in Earth’s history to predict the future?
- How can we improve man-made perturbations of natural environments?
Processes affecting Earth’s life and environment
Earth, Life and Climate is an interdisciplinary programme combining biology, chemistry, geochemistry and earth sciences. The programme focuses on 'System Earth' as a whole, studying the fundamental processes that drive natural systems, in particular those with a strong impact on the biosphere and biodiversity and the processes that determine the structure and evolution of natural environments at the Earth's surface, including soils, sediments, lakes, groundwater, wetlands, estuaries and oceans.
Experiments and reconstructions
The focus is on the interaction between communities of living organisms and the changing lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere. Some of these interactions can be studied directly in experiments and present-day environments. Other processes have to be reconstructed from sedimentary records.
Combining the knowledge of past and present environments
The Earth, Life and Climate programme aims to combine the knowledge of past and present environments to analyse future threats that could endanger our global system. The impact of human activity on the climate and the environment is also studied, with the aim of developing strategies for dealing with these man-made perturbations.
Master's programmes in Earth Sciences:
