Author: Martin H. Trauth

On September 29, 2017, the University of Potsdam will once again open its lecture halls for children to inspire them with the world of science. On this day, children can listen to interesting lectures, discuss with the scientists, and can experience exciting experiments. On Friday 29 September 2017 I will give a public lecture on tectonics, climate and human evolution for 8–10 year old children. Please visit the webpage of the children’s university to learn more about the event and how to register.

During a workshop on time series analysis on paleoclimatic data, I was asked how data gaps affect the results of spectral analyzes. The good news is, the expected climatic cycles such as Milankovitch cycles do not shift when the time series has gaps. However, it is important that the data is properly pre-treated before being examined with a method of spectral analysis. Continue reading “Data Voids and Spectral Analysis: Don’t Be Afraid Of Gaps!”

The VolkswagenFoundation funds a series of two summer schools entitled “Earth Surface Dynamics – Understanding Processes at the Earth’s Vulnerable Skin”. Here are some details about the content of the modules of the summer school. Continue reading “Summer School 2018 on Earth Surface Dynamics, Part 4”

Using the MAPIR Survey2 cameras described in an earlier post I took photos of the car park next to our departmental building. The relatively inexpensive multispectral array consists of four cameras, ~340 € each, recording NDVI Red+NIR (650 and 850 nm), Blue (450 nm), Green (550 nm) and Visible Light RGB (~370–650 nm). We use the four cameras to build a multispectral array, possibly mounted on drones, to determine various types of minerals, vegetation, and man-made materials on the ground.

Continue reading “Using a Multispectral Array with MATLAB, Part 2”

The VolkswagenFoundation funds a series of two summer schools entitled “Earth Surface Dynamics – Understanding Processes at the Earth’s Vulnerable Skin”. Here are some details about the content of the summer school.

Continue reading “Summer School 2018 on Earth Surface Dynamics, Part 3”

The summer school entitled “Earth Surface Dynamics – Understanding Processes at the Earth’s Vulnerable Skin” is the fourth summer school I am organizing together with the VolkswagenFoundation. The summer schools in the field of geo-biosciences in East Africa include the disciplines of paleoclimatology, paleontology, paleoanthropology, evolutionary biology, structural geology, and geophysics. I teach these summer schools together with colleagues from Addis Ababa University and the University of Nairobi, as well with many colleagues from other universities. Continue reading “Summer School 2018 on Earth Surface Dynamics, Part 2”

The VolkswagenFoundation funds a series of two summer schools entitled “Earth Surface Dynamics – Understanding Processes at the Earth’s Vulnerable Skin” led by apl. Prof. Dr. Martin H. Trauth, together with nine instructors from Germany, United Kingdom, and Ethiopia. The application is now open, the deadline is 1 October 2017. Download the summer school 2018 flyer.

Continue reading “Summer School 2018 on Earth Surface Dynamics, Part 1”

In the latest issue of the U Potsdam’s magazine Portal Wissen includes two articles about the Chew Bahir Drilling Project. The first of these articles is about my involvement in the project, the possible link between climate and evolution, the drilling operations in the Chew Bahir and subsequent laboratory work and time series analyses. The second article is about ancient DNA analyses of the Chew Bahir drill cores performed by my collaborators Michael Hofreiter and Ralph Tiedemann.

Continue reading “New Article about the Chew Bahir Drilling Project in University Magazin Portal Wissen”