Description: This brochure is designed for scientists and engineers of upcoming drilling projects and explains the key steps and important challenges in planning and executing continental scientific drilling.

Description: In July 2007 GFZ hosted ILP’s first Potsdam Conference, titled “Frontiers in Integrated Solid Earth Sciences”. The results of this meeting were presented in an over 400 pages large Springer book, the first volume of a new series on the International Year of Planet Earth (IYPE). In October 2010 ILP’s Second Potsdam Conference took place, entitled “Solid Earth – Basic Science for the Human Habitat”, again in Potsdam. More than 70 scientists from more than 20 states worldwide came together and shared their results, ideas and visions. This time, in September 2015, ILP’s 35th birthday was the motivation for “Celebrating Excellence in Solid Earth Sciences”. Together with more than 50 scientists, members of the ILP Task Forces and Coordinating Committees, the ILP bureau and ILP’s office came together for three days in September.

Description: The Collisional Orogeny in the Scandinavian Caledonides (COSC) scientific drilling project focuses on mountain building processes in a major mid‐Paleozoic orogen in western Scandinavia and its comparison with modern analogues. The project investigates a subduction‐generated complex (Seve Nappes) and how these in part under ultra‐high pressure conditions metamorphosed outer continental margin and continent‐ocean transition zones (COT) assemblages were emplaced onto the Baltoscandian platform and there influenced the underlying allochthons and the basement in a section provided by two fully cored 2.5 km deep drill holes. This operational report concerns the first drill hole, COSC‐1 (ICDP 5054‐1‐A), drilled from early May to late August 2014. It sampled a thick section of the lower part of the Seve Complex and was planned to penetrate its basal thrust zone into the underlying lower grade metamorphosed allochthon. The drill hole reached a depth of 2495.8 m and nearly 100 % core recovery was achieved. Although planning was based on existing geological mapping and new high‐resolution seismic surveys, the drilling resulted in some surprises: the Lower Seve Nappe proved to be composed of rather homogenous gneisses, with only subordinate mafic bodies and its basal thrust zone was unexpectedly thick (〉 800 m). The drill hole did not penetrate the bottom of the thrust zone. However, lower grade metasedimentary rocks were encountered in the lowermost part of the drill hole together with garnetiferous mylonites tens of metres thick. The tectonostratigraphic position is still unclear and geological and geophysical interpretations are under revision. The compact gneisses host only 8 fluid conducting zones of limited transmissivity between 300 m and total depth. Downhole measurements suggest an uncorrected average geothermal gradient of ~20°C/km. The drill core was documented on‐site and XRF scanned off site. During various stages of the drilling, the borehole was documented by comprehensive downhole logging. This operational report provides an overview over the COSC‐1 operations from drilling preparations to the sampling party and describes the available datasets and sample material.

Description: Arctic and subarctic regions are sensitive to climate change and, reversely, provide dramatic feedbacks to the global climate. With a focus on discovering paleoclimate and paleoceanographic evolution in the Arctic and Northwest Pacific Oceans during the last 20,000 years, we proposed this German–Sino cooperation program according to the announcement “Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) of the Federal Republic of Germany for a German–Sino cooperation program in the marine and polar research”. Our proposed program integrates the advantages of the Arctic and Subarctic marine sediment studies in AWI (Alfred Wegener Institute) and FIO (First Institute of Oceanography). For the first time, the collection of sediment cores can cover all climatological key regions in the Arctic and Northwest Pacific Oceans. Furthermore, the climate modeling work at AWI enables a “Data-Model Syntheses”, which are crucial for exploring the underlying mechanisms of observed changes in proxy records.

Description: Microplastics in aquatic ecosystems and especially in the marine environment represent a pollution of increasing scientific and societal concern, thus, meanwhile a substantial number of studies on microplastics exist. Although first steps towards a standardisation of methodologies used for the detection and identification of microplastics in environmental samples are made, the comparability of data on microplastics is currently hampered by a huge variety of different methodologies which result in the generation of data of extremely different quality and resolution. This chapter reviews the methodology presently used for assessing the concentration of microplastics in the marine environment with focus on the most convenient techniques and approaches. After an overview of non-selective sampling approaches, sample processing and treatment in the laboratory, the reader is introduced to the currently applied techniques for the identification and quantification of microplastics. The subsequent case study on microplastics in sediment samples from the North Sea measured with focal plane array (FPA)-based micro-Fourier transform infrared (micro-FTIR) spectroscopy shows that only 1.4 % of the particles visually resembling microplastics were of synthetic polymer origin. This finding emphasizes the importance of verifying the synthetic polymer origin of potential microplastics. Thus, a burning issue concerning current microplastic research is the generation of standards that allow for the assessment of reliable data on concentrations of microscopic plastic particles and the involved polymers with analytical laboratory techniques such as micro-FTIR or micro-Raman spectroscopy.

Description: The sustainable management of groundwater resources is a pressing necessity for most countries. As most of the Arab world is facing severe water scarcity, threats of depletion of non-renewable groundwater, and problems of pollution and salt-water intrusions into groundwater aquifers, much effort should be devoted to eliminate these dangers in advance. This work was devoted to bring up insights into Arab world research activities in groundwater, which is a crucial task to identify their status and can help in shaping up and improving future research activities. A bibliometric analysis has been conducted to track these activities. The study identified 1417 documents which represent 3.3% of global research productivity. Egypt was the most productive country (313; 22.1%), followed by Saudi Arabia (254; 17.9%). Total citations were 9720 with an average of 6.9. The h -index of the retrieved documents was 39, and the highest one was 22 for Egypt. The most common subject category was Environmental Science, and the most productive journal was Arabian Journal of Geosciences (99; 7.0%). In international research collaboration, France was the most collaborated country with Arab world (125; 8.8%), followed by the United States (113; 8.0%). The most productive institution was King Abdul-Aziz University, Saudi Arabia (66; 4.7%). The outcomes shows remarkable improvements in groundwater research activities originated from the Arab world. Even though, constructive efforts should be pursued vigorously to bridge the gaps in groundwater-based research. Moreover, promotion of better evaluation tools to assess the risks arising from the mismanagement of groundwater resources is required urgently.

Description: In our meeting Dynamic Earth – from Alfred Wegener to today and beyond we will review how Wegener‘s findings evolved into to modern Earth system science including its impact on climate and the Earth surface, and how this system affects our daily life: where humans live, what risks we are exposed to, where we find our resources. In the meeting we will hold sessions that cover the entire geoscience spectrum (from mineral physics over solid earth geodynamics to the climate sciences) and that explore the consequences of Wegeners findings on how humans use our planet today (from energy and mineral resources over georisks to utilisation of the subsurface and materials for modern society). We have invited keynote speakers that are eminent international scientists in these fields. In events open to the general public we will get an account of Wegeners final trip to Greenland on the history of science of his hypothesis.

Description: Floating anthropogenic litter provides habitat for a diverse community of marine organisms. A total of 387 taxa, including pro- and eukaryotic micro-organisms, seaweeds and invertebrates, have been found rafting on floating litter in all major oceanic regions. Among the invertebrates, species of bryozoans, crustaceans, molluscs and cnidarians are most frequently reported as rafters on marine litter. Microorganisms are also ubiquitous on marine litter although the composition of the microbial community seems to depend on specific substratum characteristics such as the polymer type of floating plastic items. Sessile suspension feeders are particularly well-adapted to the limited autochthonous food resources on artificial floating substrata and an extended planktonic larval development seems to facilitate colonization of floating litter at sea. Properties of floating litter, such as size and surface rugosity, are crucial for colonization by marine organisms and the subsequent succession of the rafting community. The rafters themselves affect substratum characteristics such as floating stability, buoyancy, and degradation. Under the influence of currents and winds marine litter can transport associated organisms over extensive distances. Because of the great persistence (especially of plastics) and the vast quantities of litter in the world’s oceans, rafting dispersal has become more prevalent in the marine environment, potentially facilitating the spread of invasive species.

Description: Lakes are a ubiquitous landscape feature in northern permafrost regions. They have a strong impact on carbon, energy and water fluxes and can be quite responsive to climate change. The monitoring of lake change in northern high latitudes, at a sufficiently accurate spatial and temporal resolution, is crucial for understanding the underlying processes driving lake change. To date, lake change studies in permafrost regions were based on a variety of different sources, image acquisition periods and single snapshots, and localized analysis, which hinders the comparison of different regions. Here, we present a methodology based on machine-learning based classification of robust trends of multi-spectral indices of Landsat data (TM, ETM+, OLI) and object-based lake detection, to analyze and compare the individual, local and regional lake dynamics of four different study sites (Alaska North Slope, Western Alaska, Central Yakutia, Kolyma Lowland) in the northern permafrost zone from 1999 to 2014. Regional patterns of lake area change on the Alaska North Slope (−0.69%), Western Alaska (−2.82%), and Kolyma Lowland (−0.51%) largely include increases due to thermokarst lake expansion, but more dominant lake area losses due to catastrophic lake drainage events. In contrast, Central Yakutia showed a remarkable increase in lake area of 48.48%, likely resulting from warmer and wetter climate conditions over the latter half of the study period. Within all study regions, variability in lake dynamics was associated with differences in permafrost characteristics, landscape position (i.e., upland vs. lowland), and surface geology. With the global availability of Landsat data and a consistent methodology for processing the input data derived from robust trends of multi-spectral indices, we demonstrate a transferability, scalability and consistency of lake change analysis within the northern permafrost region.