Objectives

Immediate actions that we hope will yield outputs within the current FORTHEM funding period

• Sustainability policy for the FORTHEM Alliance: Anna Roppelt (Mainz) has led the FORTHEM student body to develop a draft concept and more senior academics have made contributions. The next step is to survey the alliance about their 'sustainability behaviours': (i) Student assistants from Mainz, Riga and Palermo evaluate the Sustainability of the Alliance through distribution of questionnaires asking people to tell us how much their current behaviours accord with the sustainability policy, (ii) disseminate results and information about the consequences of current behaviours, then repeat the questionnaire annually to evaluate if there has been any change as a result of ‘education'. For further info contact Gretha Boor.
  

• “Sedimentary Basin Records of Earth’s climate” – Partner institutions (Mainz/Valencia/Dijon/Palermo) contribute online lectures and exercises over a semester so we can work toward a joint course for all Master level students in the Alliance. In August 2022 we will run a 5-day camp at Molinos with students from each partner institution. Please contact Virginia Toy (Mainz) if you already teach in this field and could contribute.                                                                                                                                                     3D-outcrop models used in this course look like this:

• Waste recycling joint study course: Māris Kļaviņš(Riga) is working on development of this course and would appreciate contact from others who are interested in being part of it. There is funding for this available in Latvia, but materials will need to be presented in Latvian.

• Co-ordination and advice on establishing research relationships with partner institutions. We are establishing as part of our website:
  • a proposal development/expertise sharing platform and workshops (co-ordinated by Martina Kirilova, Mainz)
  • Expertise template is prepared: Listing of Partner Institutions’ local expertise, areas of current research, and typical tools employed (co-ordinated by Emmanuelle Pucéat, Burgandy). Sub-groups are defined with related or complimentary interests:
    1-Climate of the Past
    2-Present and future climate variability
    3-Impact of modern climate changes on soil processes, carbon stock and water quality
    4-Resources and energies
    5-Impact of climate change and anthropogenic changes

Longer-term outputs

• Outreach and community engagement about Climate proxies / records and Earth resources in our region. Emmanuelle Puceat – to provide more information about the current plans.

• Geothermal living lab: We hope to drill a research borehole and set up a long- term monitoring lab to evaluate the potential for this to be a significant energy source for a new Earth Sciences building that will be constructed at Universität Mainz in the next 5 years. Are other institutions interested in acquiring similar data from their regions? Please contact Virginia Toy (Mainz) to discuss further.

Completed outputs

• Stakeholders' meeting - a workshop with academics and external stakeholders that took place on 8 October 2021