Events

A suite of field experiments illuminate the intimate involvement of moisture in the progressive physical disintegration (cracking) process of surface rocks, even in extremely dry deserts, and in the formation of asymmetrical hyperarid landscapes on Earth and Mars.

Long-term high-resolution orbital imaging at Mars has led to extraordinary advances in understanding martian ice and its connection to climate.  Icy seasonal phenomena such as flows in gullies, avalanches, and exotic defrosting patterns characterize the present climate. Interannual variability over a martian decade helps us deduce climatic averages and current trends. Observations of polar ice layers have characterized periodicities related to orbital change over longer timescales up to millions of years.

Here, I’ll describe the HiRISE camera and its continued mission to describe a dynamic Mars over 20 years of observations, with a special focus on north polar avalanches.  HiRISE has uniquely high resolution and benefits from high signal-to-noise (even at the poles); a near-polar orbit that allows imaging of almost any location within two weeks; color bands that are sensitive to ice; and sufficient imaging stability to construct high-quality meter-scale DTMs. The scientific impact of HiRISE owes much to rapid data releases and community targeting via our online tool HiWISH, ensuring acquisition and analysis of data relevant to today’s scientific questions. 

Atmospheric mineral dust is a well-established source of nutrients to marine ecosystems, yet its contribution to terrestrial plant nutrition has long been underestimated, largely due to the assumption that nutrient acquisition occurs predominantly through root uptake from soils. Here, we present evidence from controlled greenhouse experiments under ambient and elevated CO₂, laboratory simulations of leaf microenvironments, isotopic and geochemical tracing, and field fertilization experiments conducted in both a Mediterranean ecosystem and a tropical forest in Puerto Rico, demonstrating that plants can directly acquire nutrients through their leaf surfaces following atmospheric dust deposition. Using rare earth elements and Nd isotopes, we distinguish nutrients derived from soils from those delivered by deposited atmospheric particles. Laboratory simulations show that mildly acidic leaf surfaces, together with organic acids secreted by leaves, enhance mineral dissolution and facilitate foliar uptake of dust-borne nutrients. In a pioneering Mediterranean field experiment explicitly designed to isolate foliar uptake, we quantified the bioavailable fraction of key nutrients supplied by dust, including P, Fe, Mn, and Cu, and observed clear enrichment of multiple micronutrients in leaf tissues following dust application. These field-based measurements enabled the construction of a global geospatial framework integrating dust deposition with soil nutrient fluxes, indicating that dust-derived inputs can constitute a meaningful fraction of total nutrient supply across large regions, and that during dust events, short-term foliar inputs can rival or exceed soil-derived fluxes. Complementary field observations in a tropical forest in Puerto Rico further reveal foliar nutrient responses consistent with direct dust uptake. Building on these results, we outline a pathway for incorporating foliar dust uptake into Earth system representations of terrestrial nutrient cycling by explicitly accounting for atmospheric nutrient inputs at the canopy level and their interaction with soil-derived fluxes. Together, these findings identify foliar dust uptake as an overlooked but consequential nutrient acquisition pathway and highlight its relevance in highly weathered, nutrient-limited tropical forests, where atmospheric inputs may play a critical role in regulating nutrient availability and carbon–nutrient interactions.

Earth system data is rapidly increasing in volume as new observation systems generate data at rates of terabytes/day and modelling systems continue to

increase their resolution and the number of ensemble members. Coping with such amounts of data presents

substantial challenges to Earth system researchers who often find it difficult to identify suitable tools and concepts to efficiently process such data to the extent that is necessary to obtain statistically meaningful results. Conversely, computer scientists are generally more familiar with the technical aspects of data handling, but they have difficulties to understand the domain-specific aspects of Earth system data with respect to Earth’s geometry or important data and

metadata properties that cannot be neglected. This seminar builds on a one semester university course (slides and videos are available at https://

b2drop.eudat.eu/s/iwYob4QonXHjEPH ) and will discuss selected aspects in an interactive fashion,

including best practices for handling massive amounts

of (Earth system) data, the role of metadata and quality control and more.