Laboratories

Sedimentology

Aim:

Study of transport and accumulation processes of permafrost-related deposits
Classification of sediment sequences in general

Parameters:

Sediment structure description
Grain-size distribution
Mass specific magnetic susceptibility

Laboratory Equipment:

Sample preparing: drying (freeze drying, drying ovens), grinding (planetary mill), splitting (Rotary sample divider, orbital platform shaker, overhead shaker)
Mineral separation: Centrifuges (Heraeus Multifuge 3s, Heraeus Cryofuge 8500i, Heraeus Megafuge 40)
Particle size analysis: dry and wet sieving (vibration sieve shaker, sonic sifter), Laser particle-size measuring instrument (Malvern Mastersizer 3000)
Magnetic Susceptibility (MS2B Sensor, Bartington Instruments)

Head

Lutz Schirrmeister

Technical Staff

Justin Lindemann

Carbon / Nitrogen

Aim:

Characterization of carbon and nitrogen vulnerability in thawing permafrost
Carbon and nitrogen quantification and paleo-environmental reconstruction

Parameters and devices:

Bulk total carbon (soliTOC Cube, Elementar Analysesysteme)
Bulk total nitrogen (rapid Max N exceed, Elementar Analysesysteme)
Total mercury (DMA-80 evo, MLS-MWS)
Lipid biomarkers (e.g. alkanes, fatty acids, alcohols) using an accelerated solvent extractor (ASE 350, Dionex), a medium pressure liquid chromatograph (MPLC, Köhnen-Willsch Chromatography) as a GC-MS (TRACE 1310 + ISQ 7000, ThermoFischer)
Gas production after incubation (incubators: RUMED P0530-00 and GC: Shimadzu Nexis GC-2030)

Head

Jens Strauss

Technical Staff

Justin Lindemann

Alena Kalitzki

Jonas Kaltschmidt

Zeynep Ibrahim (trainee)

Kian Langer (trainee)

Hydrochemistry

Aim:

Analysis of surface and ground water, pore water, seawater, snow and ice samples, and water extracts for water chemistry.
Hydrochemical characterisation of permafrost regions.

Parameters:

Electrical conductivity, alkalinity, pH
Dissolved ions, dissolved carbon, dissolved nitrogen

Laboratory Equipment:

ICP-OES Optima 8300 DV (Perkin Elmer): Measurement of cations in diverse liquid solutions.
Ionen-Chromatograph ICS 2100 (Dionex/Thermo Fisher Scientific GmbH): Measurement of anorganic anions in various aquatic solutions using electrical conductivity detection.
TOC-VCPH + TOC-L/ TNM (Shimadzu) Determination of TC, DC, TIC, DIC, TOC, DOC (NPOC) TN/TDN in various aquatic media
Automatic Titration System „794 Basic Titrino“ (Metrohm): Measurement of alkalinity / bicarbonate via potentiometric pH value.
Laboratory robot "Seal Analytics" manual or automatic: Measurement of pH and electrical conductivit in aquatic solutions.
Standard laboratory equipment: MQ system (Millipore Advantage A10) for productino of ultrapure water, drying ovens, analytical balance, precision scales, fume hoods

Head

Paul Overduin

Technical Staff

Antje Eulenburg

Soil Physics

Aim:

Calibration, testing and quality control of meteorological and soilphysical sensors for polar environments in long-term observations
Experimental bridge between field observations and numerical modelling; testing and unravelling complex physical processes

Parameter:

Soil physical and thermal properties of undisturbed and artificial samples (i.e. porosity, thermal and hydraulic conductivity)

Laboratory Equipment:

Climatic chamber (1000 liter, temperature range: -72 to +180 ° C, humidity range: 10 to 98% rh)
Universal Oven (260 liter, temperature range: +30 to +300 °C)
Various sensors (temperature, soil moisture, soil heatflux, electric conductivity, etc.) for experimental setups
Electronics workshop for production and operation of various measurement systems

Head

Julia Boike

Technical Staff

Niko Bornemann

Remote Sensing

Aims:

Quantification of permafrost land cover, land cover change, and trends using ground-based, airborne, and satellite remote sensing
Detecting, mapping, and characterizing thermokarst, thermo-erosion, coastal erosion, and other permafrost-region disturbance dynamics
Mapping periglacial geomorphology, land surface changes, and surface deformation
Advancing machine learning and deep learning for permafrost region remote sensing applications
Remote sensing of Arctic Ocean Color
Upscaling of permafrost region field measurements with remote sensing
Generating permafrost remote sensing datasets suitable for model parametrization and validation
Making geospatial permafrost datasets available through dedicated data portals

Platforms and Sensors:

Satellite data: mostly optical and high to moderate spatial resolution
Airborne data: optical cameras and LiDAR
Ground-based data: LiDAR and dGPS

Equipment:

Leica Multistation MS50
Leica VIVA DGPS
Greenvalley LiDAR Backpack
DJI Phantom Pro MS4
Leica Digital Nivellier
Sphereoptics field spectrometer
Calitoo sun photometer
Trios RAMSES spectroradiometer
Garmin handheld GPS
NVIDIA DGX GPU Workstation
Multiple workstations
Modular Aerial Camera System (MACS) with RGB, NIR, an TIR sensors (operated onboard AWI Polar planes)
Riegl-XXXXXX topobathymetric airborne LiDAR

Software:

ENVI, CATALYST
QGIS, ArcGIS Pro
MaPublisher, Golden Surfer, GlobalMapper
DLR MACS Box
Pix4D, AgiSoft Metashape
Google Earth Engine
CKAN, TerriaMap

Head

Guido Grosse

Technical Staff

Sebastian Laboor

Our laboratories are part of a regional network of geoscience Laboratory Infrastructure (LI).

LI@Geo.X, a search portal which is operated by the regional research network Geo.X, includes information about the laboratory infrastructures of the network’s partner institutions supporting researchers in planning and implementing research projects.