Research

Human Geography and Development Research: Human Geography and Development Research

Human geography and development research deals primarily with topics of development research, world population development or population geography. The construction of post-civil war societies in terms of environmental peacebuilding, transformation processes in southern Africa as well as aspects of geotourism in the Caucasus and Germany form current teaching research projects.

Spatial Planning and Urban Geography: Spatial Planning and Urban Geography

Spatial planning and urban geography deals with spatial structures and planning processes on a regional level: current topics are gentrification, phase models of geography, event-oriented urban development, digitalization in citizen participation, photovoltaic installations, values and methods in planning processes, critical infrastructure in climate change, material and procedural guiding principles in spatial planning. Spatial evaluation research is a focus here.

Economic Geography: Economic Geography

Economic geography takes on the task of explaining, describing and evaluating spatial structures and their changes. The teaching of theory and methodology, along with the independent work of the students, are the cornerstones of the teaching. Core research topics are knowledge-based regional economic and innovation development, which are expressed in topics such as hidden champions or machine processing of web data as a new data source.

Physical Geography: Physical Geography

Based on the motto The past is the key to the future, physical geography is concerned with the analysis of sedimentary archives in order to reconstruct the paleoenvironment and the human-environment relationship. Innovative methods are used, following a multidisciplinary approach. The establishment of OSL-based chronostratigraphies (optically stimulated luminescence) is the focus of the methodological approach.

Climatology, Climate Dynamics and Climate Change: Climatology, Climate Dynamics and Climate Change

The working group climatology, climate dynamics and climate change studies regional to continental climate variability and change and anthropogenic forcing over the past 2000 years. Early detection and prediction of extreme events are central and investigated using statistical models, regional paleoclimate simulations and reconstructions, artificial intelligence and other methods. The impact of extreme events on water, energy and food security, disaster management and the course of history is explored.

Climate-environment-human relationships: Climate-Environment-Human Relationships

Climate-environment-human relations encompass a wide range of topics and interdisciplinary approaches. In our working group, dendrochronological methods build the common ground to link divers research fields. In Dendrochronology the annual rings of trees are analyzed to gain knowledge about past climate changes and their impacts on society or to understand the sensitivity of forest ecosystems to external influences.

Didactics of Geography: Didactics of Geography

The didactics of geography deals with the design of tomorrow's geography lessons. In addition to qualitative and quantitative research methods, the diagnosis and promotion of systems competence and the conceptualization of basic concepts are part of the investigations. Furthermore, the handling of ethical questions in the classroom is dealt with.

Geoinformatics and Remote Sensing: Geoinformatics and Remote Sensing

Geoinformatics analyzes spatial processes and interactions by means of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) - specialized computer software products. Furthermore, remote sensing, scripting languages such as Python, R and JavaScript as well as cutting-edge WebGIS technologies and 3D point cloud processing tools supplement classic GIS operations.

research

Projects

Current Research Projects using External Funds

Final Papers

Postdoctoral lecture qualification

Literature Series by the Institute of Geography

Entwicklungsforschung